Legislatively, Republicans can begin clarifying their convictions by pressing to limit the scope and duration of what a Republican administration has unleashed -- the increasingly indiscriminate intrusion of government into financing the private sector. McConnell believes the bailout legislation was "necessary but not necessarily precedential." It should be considered a one-time response to a once-in-a-century crisis, and should be terminated "as soon as possible" by government selling the assets it has acquired in order to recoup the money it has spent.

"The Senate," says McConnell, "is a place that brings many things to the middle, or stops them altogether." He has urged the president-elect to "tackle the big issues -- Social Security, Medicare -- that cannot be addressed without some kind of bipartisan buy-in."

Democrats probably can peel off a few Republican senators to reach 60 votes for some of their agenda. But not for all of it, which actually should please President Obama. For example, McConnell's caucus probably can stop organized labor's top priority -- abolition of workers' right to a secret ballot in unionization votes. Obama has endorsed this travesty but might prudently hope it never reaches his desk.

McConnell is Kentucky's most important politician since Henry Clay, "the Great Compromiser." Clay's attempts to defuse the sectional crisis rooted in slavery failed, but they bought time for Northern strength -- in population and industrial muscle -- to become sufficient to save the nation. McConnell, too, has the patience that politics repays and that the Republican recuperation might require.

But he also has a keen sense of how the nation "can change on a dime." Drawing upon this year's grim experience, he dryly says: "Governing is a hazardous business for presidential parties."