The election is over and the country waits: not for the returns--Lyndon Johnson has smashed to the greatest election victory since FDR crushed Alf Landon--but for the President's performance in the months ahead, for the fulfillment of the promise that his landslide gives. Will Johnson, like Roosevelt, find his massive mandate more of a hindrance than a help? Will he choose to compromise away his program to hold his consensus? Or will he move boldly and artfully to transform his huge plurality into the energetic legislation the country needs and has waited for so long?

The returns clearly show that the country has repudiated Barry Goldwater in favor of a status. quo. But whether they also show a willingness among Americans to explore the future, to pour substance into the vague, shadowy outlines of the "Great Society" depends almost completely on the mind and will of Lyndon Johnson.

No one doubts Johnson's political skill, only his will to use it with courage and compassion. This will, which was not tested in the soggy, debilitating campaign, must be shown in the next two weeks, when he selects his Cabinet, and in the next two months, when he gives his inaugural address and proposes his legislative program to the Congress. If Johnson is to be more than the political artist who succeeded John F. Kennedy, more than the man who opposed Barry Goldwater, he must prove it then.

The mindless charade that the country witnessed during the campaign is now mercifully past. We look with excitement to the new Administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, hopeful that he will join his sense of politics with a sense of purpose and use his immense mandate to search for the future not to consolidate the ever-present past.