There is a singular clash about to play out in this year’s presidential election, and the outcome will depend on the sense of time and timing John McCain and Barack Obama are able to carve out between now and November.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, speaking just down the road from me on Cape Cod yesterday, told us things are not as dire as we might believe, but I will guess that his chauffeur fills the limo and someone else does the grocery shopping at his house.

Very real people are hurting right now, and but for the season they are not having to choose yet between hunger and heat.  Very real people are being laid off, and are touching up their resumes and hitting the streets looking for jobs.  These very real people need very real relief today.

Those same people, like our parents before, want their children to have better lives, and are concerned for the future.  Other very real people see some good coming out of the pump pains we are all suffering today – - a cut back in consumption.  Those people will argue that forcing us to live more frugally, to conserve energy, and become more conscious about the environment, will make for a better tomorrow.

This is the clash the result of which will decide the election of our next leader.  Those suffering the most want and need relief today, and telling them it’s in their best interests to continue suffering for the good of the country’s future will not wash.  Those who have the luxury of looking at the longer term will see the need for some measure of pain today.

In his remarks yesterday, Bernanke acknowledged that economic activity is “likely to be weak” during the current April-to-June quarter.  The market news suggested as much.  Corn futures rose sharply again yesterday as a result of the weather in the corn belt states, and although wheat futures dropped slightly, they were dropping from an already elevated price point.  Farmers are worried that excessive rains will damage recently planted crops and hurt yields, adding to the food inflation that has driven up the price of everything from eggs to meat to bread.

The pressure from our weak economy will continue to mount on those already suffering from the rising costs of just about everything we buy.  Come November, there are likely to be very real people having to make that very real decision between hunger and heat.  Home heating oil’s price is not far below gas prices now, and assuming a barrel of oil remains at or near its present trading level, that hunger/heat decision’s reality will determine many people’s votes.

The elderly and those on fixed incomes will view their fiscal situations as more dire than those who are younger and more adaptable to the workplace; Moms and Dads with mouths to feed and mortgages to pay will want more immediate relief for their woes and won’t be open to any “bigger picture, down the road” arguments.

The dark cloud over all of this is the cost of the wars we are fighting and the resentment ever building for the billions being spent on one that many now consider to have been so unnecessary.  Age and income are not driving that sentiment, though, as more than 82% of the country believes we have been moving in the wrong direction for some time now.

McCain will have to come up with something better than the old “tax and spend Democrat” line he levels again Obama, and Obama will need more than the “Bush extension” claim against McCain.  The extent to which either will be able to walk that fine political line between immediate relief and long term solution well enough to satisfy the right number of voters will be the high wire act of this year’s presidential circus.

It provides something of a character test for each, too, as honesty might not be the best political policy. How do you tell someone struggling today that your plans will solve the problem ten years from now?  And yet it might be in the country’s best interests to do just that.  Each will need a well conceived policy and carefully chosen words to satisfy both the short term struggle and the long term answer, and the first to do that wins the election.