Facing the coming physicial, fiscal storms

Dear President Obama,

We know there are only seven days until the election, and you're in the fight of your political life with Gov. Romney, but we hope you'll take a couple of days off from campaigning to deal with Hurricane Sandy, which promises to become an unwelcome visitor to your neighborhood in the next couple of days.

Yes, we've put too much emphasis on the power of the presidency when it comes to dealing with natural disasters, but it's time to put politics aside and deal with the emergency at hand.

Dear Mr. Romney,

We know it will be tempting to second-guess the president's response to the approaching "Frankenstorm," but we hope you will show restraint. Let's take a couple of days off and wish Washington and the rest of the East Coast well as we pull together to face the approaching wrath of Mother Nature.

There are plenty of other issues to deal with in the remaining few days until the election; besides, with early voting, many ballots have been cast already.

Come to think of it, Hurricane Sandy should serve as a metaphor for the challenges facing the next president -- whoever he is -- in the coming months and years.

What started out to be a relatively minor tropical storm has built strength as it moves north, promising to combine with other winter storms to the west, and high tides to create conditions that could leave up to 100 million people stranded or in the dark.

While the government did what it could to avoid a financial meltdown in 2008, Congress has failed to take decisive action to avoid the looming storm that will first arrive with the "fiscal cliff" of mandated budget cuts, or later with the arrival of consequences of the budget deficit of $16 trillion and climbing.

It will take true statesmen -- and stateswomen -- to put politics aside and make the political sacrifices that will be necessary to save the nation from the approaching fiscal storm.