The Election Is Over. Let the Election Begin.

Phew, I'm glad those elections are over . . . (pause for four seconds).

Now we can focus on obsessing about the results and extrapolating their meaning over two long years to predict who will win the presidency in 2008.

On the Republican side, some party faithful delude themselves that losing is winning -- that the GOP benefits because now the nation will see Democrats at the wheel. Sure, confronted with a lie detector, the GOP candidates would prefer to run against Washington in '08 than defend a stale Republican leadership. But it's never good to be out of power.

The GOP nominating process, perhaps now more than ever, favors front-runners and candidates with a national fundraising base. With the first voting just 14 months away, a contender will probably need at least $60 million before the balloting even starts.

This year's midterm results are just a fraction of what will decide '08. Questions about character, issues of peace and war and surprise events may all still arise. At this point, as good a predictor as any is the contenders' performance and progress over the past year. So who's up and who's down after 2006?

Mitt Romney

The governor of Massachusetts may have had the best year of all the GOP presidential contenders: Nobody can blame him for what happened in Washington. He hired some well-connected talent for his political action committee, impressed diehard conservatives at the Heritage Foundation and the National Review, and mastered the politics of health care in a one-party legislature by pushing through a respected plan for universal coverage. And he gives the best presentation from the lectern.

But getting the GOP faithful to cheer for a Massachusetts politician will be a challenge. Plus, Republicans quietly wonder about "the Mormon thing," as though it's an aardvark chained to Romney's ankle. (Are we afraid that he may be too wholesome?) More troubling is that Romney, a one-term governor like George W. Bush, has no claim to be a credible commander in chief.

John McCain

The Arizona senator had some ups and downs in a year that I would rate a net plus for his chances. McCain's biography still serves him well, but doubters question whether the baggage he carries on his left (his partnership, for example, with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on an immigration-reform bill) will prevent him from moving to the right as he reaches for the conservative banner in the primaries. Yet McCain could reassure the conservative base that his bipartisan work in Washington is how he moves its agenda to within the realm of the possible.

In U.S. history, there have been times when the presidency seeks a candidate -- not the other way around. This was true for Ronald Reagan, and could be for McCain, too; he's on the right side of such issues as corruption, earmarking and spending. Also, Republicans are hierarchical: We tend to pick the front-runners and rarely reach to the back of the pack.

Newt Gingrich