WASHINGTON – Rip Van America will soon awake in a world that changed as the campaign spun. After a yearlong political binge that has consumed billions of dollars, oceans of national energy and attention, and the credibility of the country’s two major political parties, old Rip has adjustments to make.

Peering out through a pulsating election hangover, Rip will perceive that while the United States was so self-absorbed, China accelerated its breathtaking run to become a global financial center, the world’s manufacturing hub and the price-setting consumer of oil and other commodities.

China, India and Japan have been creating an economic platform to make this the Asian century, while U.S. resources, manpower and policy initiatives have been poured into the dangerous conflicts of the greater Middle East.

Vladimir Putin used his time-out from American scrutiny to bog down deeper in Chechnya and to knock the props out from a promising Russian financial recovery by dismembering the Yukos oil group. Western and much of Eastern Europe came together in a historic if still untested union of political equals.

These developments got a passing nod, if that, from the candidates. Even on Iraq, George W. Bush and John Kerry were neither comprehensive nor candid with the electorate. They covered over the centrality of Israel to American policy and international standing with competing platitudes or silence. While the Great Satan was navel-gazing, Iran and North Korea pursued their nuclear ambitions without hindrance.

In saying goodbye to Campaign 2004 and all that, it is tempting to conclude that the United States and the world cannot afford an American campaign as long, as shallow and as expensive as the one now coming down to its bitter dregs. And yet this campaign has forced prospective voters (and perhaps, in private, even the candidates and their handlers) to focus on and think about serious issues. With the cost comes important gain.

The things to deplore about this particular campaign are legion. I would start with a vivid contrast that has emerged in its closing days. It is not the campaign contrast between Bush and Kerry that I have in mind. There isn’t, alas, much of one.

As the Democrats promised, Kerry and his chief aides have pursued political manhood by matching Republican scare tactics, personal vilification and distortions blow for blow. The over-the-top Kerry treatment of a news story about missing explosives in Iraq in the campaign’s closing week is the latest example showing he can compete with the GOP’s senior demagogues.

The contrast is between today and the time when one party – in recent years, the Republicans – waged campaigns that clearly won the sleaze sweepstakes, while the other party remained clueless or sought a somewhat higher road. That epoch seems headed for history’s ash heap. Karl Rove, meet Bob Shrum.

Political consultants are, even more than most of us, products of the times in which they live: Today it is not just party operatives who live by the low blow. This campaign has empowered the emergence of a permanent opposition in American politics that owes allegiance not to recognizable political philosophies, heroes or traditions, but to the sneer and the art of denigration by the one-liner.

That is not to say that politicians do not deserve to be ridiculed or satirized when they slip up. It is to marvel at the absolute moral superiority – expressed toward both Kerry and Bush – and the unshakable certainty about distant events and complex societies that have been voiced in so many corners in this campaign.

If he wins, Kerry will inherit this permanent opposition, which could care less about the complexities of the choices that will confront him. The professionally snide are a self-regarding elite guided by an iron discipline of never being impressed by anyone or anything outside their own circle of cynicism.

Yet the campaign ends with pollsters and pundits alike uncertain of the name of the next president. The definition of the winner of a chess game is said to be the person who makes the next-to-last mistake. This campaign may well hinge on that proposition as well.

My guess? Bush wants above all to avoid losing the national vote a second time, and for good reason. He has fought to increase turnout even in safe GOP districts. But Kerry has gained lately in big electoral-vote states. Don’t be totally amazed if the Democrats and Republicans switch places in the popular vote and Electoral College results, as they have been doing in campaign tactics, this time around.

Jim Hoagland is a Washington Post columnist. Contact him by writing to jimhoagland@washpost.com.