Thanks largely to the impending bailout and the last eight years of profligate spending, we aren’t going to be able to afford all those great programs they’re talking about:

As the candidates debate the nuances of their health care plans or tax cuts, consider: How can you cut taxes when the government is so deep in the red? The budget deficit is projected to top $400 billion – and that was before the bailout. How can you expand health care coverage when the country is broke? The federal debt is now expected to top $11 trillion by 2010. How can you focus on “earmarks” and “waste” when everyone knows they make up a meaningless fraction of the federal budget? How you tackle spending without a serious discussion of serious cuts to Medicare and Social Security, which account for 43.5 percent of federal spending? How can you focus on anything but war, when you inherit two conflicts with outcomes that are very much in doubt? (U.S commanders say the war in Afghanistan is going worse then ever and will require many more troops to win.)

The answer, of course, is that you can’t. You can’t provide health care for everyone, or a college education to every high school graduate. We won’t be able to spend the $ 1 trillion or more it will cost to fund a mission to Mars that won’t materialize for another two decades or so. Right now, we’re not even in a position to respond militarily if the North Koreans waged an all-out war against the South.

But you wouldn’t know that if you listened to the Republican and Democratic candidates for President and their surrogates. In their world, the promises flow almost as freely as the money flows out of Washington, D.C.

There are many lessons that we can learn from the last eight years, but the most important one is that what a Presidential candidate says on the campaign trail doesn’t really mean much once they come into office:

[George W. Bush] ran as a compassionate conservative who promised to restrain spending and practice a humble foreign policy. Instead, he launched two big wars and oversaw the biggest expansion of federal government in history. He was obviously shaped by big events: the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001 and now the meltdown of the nation’s financial structure. This serves as a powerful reminder that what candidates say during these campaigns usually isn’t the best guide to how they will govern in office. In Friday’s debate, the candidates paid only glancing attention to the fiscal state of the nation they will run. There was virtually no talk about rising Medicare costs or the fiscal fallout of running two wars. Both candidates continue to talk about their plans as if it’s 2000.

Because to do otherwise would require them, and the American public, to face up to the fact that there is a bill coming due that will have to be paid, no matter how painful it might be.