Advice to George W. Bush partisans: Don't spend your share of that $1.5 trillion tax cut just yet.
Memo to Al Gore supporters: You may have to retire minus that Social Security Plus account your man promised.
In fact, as the standoff in Florida grinds on, the best-made plans of Bush and Gore are melting like a spilled box of Popsicles in the Florida sun.
By Election Day, much had already been written about how a close vote would send the new president to Washington with a restricted mandate. With events of the last four weeks, that hypothetical mandate has gone from limited to zero, while partisan divisions have been gouged ever deeper on both sides.
As a result, the nation's likely agenda for the next four years has quietly shifted, too, with each day that has passed since Nov. 7.
Conventional wisdom says that governance will be so bitter, Congress so polarized, that the party that ends up losing the presidency will simply hunker down for two years and hope to gain - or strengthen - control of the House and the Senate in the midterm elections.
But don't write off Washington yet. ''There might be another dynamic at work here,'' says US Senator John R. McCain, Republican of Arizona. He says the unexpected events of recent weeks could also force the parties to compromise in ways they have not had to before. ''At least those of us who actually campaigned this fall recognize that Americans are fed up with the partisanship and the bickering and want us to work together.''
That impatience with inaction is mirrored in Congress, says US Senator John F. Kerry, and with a mandate-less chief executive and a Congress split down the middle, the political players will have to work in bipartisan fashion. ''If the votes aren't there, everybody is going to have to compromise,'' says Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat.
US Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Maine Republican, concurs. ''The only way anything is going to get done is if it's bipartisan,'' says Collins. ''I don't think anybody wants to see four years of more gridlock.''
If the mood in Congress may favor compromise, history also suggests that the next two years need not be a waste. In his 1991 book, ''Divided We Govern,'' David Mayhew, a professor of political science at Yale University, concludes that in the postwar era, divided control of the presidency and Congress has not had a dominant effect on congressional productivity.
''It didn't matter that much,'' says Mayhew.
Nor has a close split in the Congress proved an insurmountable impediment. The last time the division of power in the House of Representatives was anywhere near this narrow was in 1953, the start of Dwight Eisenhower's presidency, ''but they had pretty good success in getting Ike's program through,'' says Mayhew.
That said, governing style will matter, which is why several academic observers believe Republican George W. Bush, with a record of reaching across party lines as governor of Texas, would have a better prospect for success than Democrat Al Gore, who styles himself more a fighter and, as Mayhew observes, ''doesn't have many lines out to the Republicans.''
A President Bush might also find partners for compromise in a group of 25 to 30 moderate-to-conservative ''blue-dog Democrats,'' says Ronald Peters, chairman of the political science department at the University of Oklahoma.
For the past few years, Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat, has been able to keep that group from straying off the reservation by arguing that President Clinton would veto any GOP legislation the blue dogs supported.
But if Bush makes it to the Oval Office, that argument is off the table.
''Now if they go along with the Republicans, they will have a president who will sign the bill,'' says Peters, who adds that if one party appears obstructionist, it runs a risk at the polls in 2002.
So where does the best chance for compromise exist?
Taxes
As the Washington establishment discovered this year, in a highly charged atmosphere, it can be tough even to give money back to taxpayers. Yet with a non-Social Security surplus of more than $2 trillion over the next decade, most observers think Congress will find some way to cut taxes.
Two good guesses, says Mayhew, are bills that passed the 106th Congress, only to be vetoed by Clinton.
First, Congress and the president will come to some agreement on erasing (or easing) the so-called marriage penalty, under which some 25 million couples pay more in federal income tax than they would as single filers.
Second, there probably will also be an agreement on reducing or eliminating the inheritance tax, the so-called death tax.
''Those two are so popular they may get done in some fashion no matter who is president,'' says Carol Cox Wait, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
The biggest sticking point might be where the cutoff will come on the estate tax. Democrats have favored exempting all estates under $2 million (per individual), while Republicans favor a complete elimination of the tax.
A broader income tax cut also stands a good chance, though it won't look like either the larger proposal Bush favors or the $500 billion targeted tax cut Gore wants.
''It will probably be less targeted than Gore's, but smaller than Bush's,'' predicts Barry Rogstad, president of the American Business Conference, a nonpartisan business group.
Even US Representative Joe Moakley, a Massachusetts Democrat who is generally pessimistic about the prospects for compromise in the next Congress, believes some tax reduction will pass ''because everybody wants a tax cut.''
Prescription drugs
Another area where Gore and Bush differed on the means but shared a common goal was helping seniors with the cost of prescription drugs.
That's why both sides should be willing to compromise around some sort of benefit, at least for lower-income seniors.
''While there is disagreement on how to provide a prescription drug benefit, there is virtual unanimity that there needs to be some sort of prescription drug benefit at least for low-income seniors,'' says Collins.
Kerry seconds that bipartisan notion. ''I think a prescription drug benefit will probably be one of the first bills'' to pass Congress, he says.
In addition, ''I would expect to see a patient's bill of rights,'' says Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. McCain agrees that both items are on the list of issues ''ripe'' for passage.
Education
On the campaign trail, both candidates talked endlessly about education as a top priority, though with different approaches. In Congress, a group of so-called New Democrats and moderate Republicans have been working hard to reshape federal education programs to emphasize flexibility and accountability.
That approach ''would demand real accountability for results, but get the federal government out of the business of micromanaging how state and local districts do the job,'' says Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a moderate think tank.
That bipartisan group came very close to reaching an agreement last year, says Collins, agreeing on goals, but ultimately foundering on the specifics of the distribution formula for federal money.
This year, Collins believes there's a centrist critical mass to reshape (and redefine) the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which will send about $158 billion back to the states for the next five years.
Welfare
The welfare reform bill of 1996, which ended Aid to Families with Dependent Children as a federal entitlement and imposed a five-year lifetime limit on welfare, is up for reauthorization by the end of 2002, notes Calvin Mackenzie, a professor of government at Colby College.
Although the overhaul was contentious when it passed, a strong economy has helped it work, and both parties now view it as a success. ''There's a pretty broad consensus that it has worked pretty well, so something is likely to happen on that,'' says Mackenzie.
And if all, or most, of that agenda passed?
''It's not revolutionary,'' says Ornstein, ''but it's not beanbag, either.''
New England
Finally, the political situation may prove a blessing in disguise for moderates - and particularly Republican moderates, a group that has tended to be marginalized as the GOP tacked rightward in the last 20 years.
''That is particularly true in the Senate because you can't get anything done without the moderates,'' says Ornstein.
That's good news for New England, for from Maine to Vermont to Rhode Island - and even, on certain issues, New Hampshire - most of New England's six Republican senators are of the moderate mold.
So after 15 years of watching power and influence flow steadily southward, should New Englanders look forward to the prospect of increased clout? ''Yes, you should,'' says Ornstein.
