Please answer “yes” to one of the following:

In trying to end the recession and increase employment, has Washington: (1) overreached its constitutional power, or (2) failed to exert enough power?

According to Tuesday’s election results, voters seem to have answered “yes” to both questions.

This apparent contradiction reflects two perennial themes in American politics.

Blame for not doing enough to change a bad economy falls upon incumbent office holders, regardless of their capacity to improve things. But elected officials who flex political muscle in a strenuous attempt to alter the direction of the economy are accused of violating the Constitution.

In the 2010 campaign, these themes were encompassed in oft-repeated mantras about the Democrats’ failure to restore jobs, the federal “takeover” of health care and banking, and the Wall Street “bailout.”

In a sense, the campaign debate was a muddled one. For one thing, it’s unclear that anything done by Washington could have curtailed the recession once it began.

For another, the extent of the reach of federal power, though still an unresolved constitutional issue, was merely a stalking horse for competing political, economic and social interests.

The Constitution specifically enumerates certain powers which are granted to the federal government (as well as others which are denied to it).

Federal powers not mentioned in the Constitution are addressed in one sweeping provision, the Tenth Amendment, which states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

At first glance, the Tenth Amendment seems straightforward enough. The federal government should only do what the Constitution expressly allows it to do. But there’s a hitch!

Article I, Section IX of the Constitution grants Congress the implied authority to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States.” Since the late 1930s, the Supreme Court has broadly interpreted this implied authority but has never defined its limits.

For example, the Constitution grants Congress express power “to regulate commerce … among the several States,” but it says nothing about maintaining Social Security or Medicare insurance for the elderly and disabled — programs that have been justified for decades as “necessary and proper” to regulate interstate commerce.

The mortgage crisis and financial meltdown of 2008, coupled with relentless increases in health-care costs and erosion of health-insurance coverage, posed grave risks to the vitality of American commerce. In an effort to solve these problems, President Obama and a Democratic Congress used implied constitutional powers to extend a sweeping business/banking bailout program and pass financial-regulatory and health-care-reform laws.

Were they legally correct in doing so? That question will ultimately have to be answered by the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, however, the fierce debate about the propriety of their measures is being carried on in the political arena, where Republicans currently have the momentum. During the campaign, the GOP and their business backers, trying to elbow their way back into power and further their own agenda, labeled Obama’s legislative initiatives unconstitutional and promised to roll them back. It was a message that resonated with many voters, who were apprehensive, among other things, about being forced to buy health insurance while financially strapped.

Yet even if Republicans should succeed in repealing or forcing modifications to these laws, they will be stuck with the same promises to restore jobs as the Democrats before them. Can they fulfill those promises, using tax cuts and a smaller-government model? Probably not, at least in the short term.

A market economy is cyclical, periodically expanding and contracting according to internal rhythms that are usually measured in years. During contractions, unemployment, business failures, bankruptcies and foreclosures increase dramatically, resulting in widespread human suffering.

Elected officials cannot legislate their way out of a recession. They can only blunt its impact and try to restore public confidence through increased public works spending, relief benefits, business loans, lending guarantees and the like, while they wait for the storm to pass.

The Great Depression of the 1930s, for instance, continued for almost a decade, despite a plethora of New Deal programs designed to stimulate business, create jobs, raise wages, prevent foreclosures and reverse deflation. The Depression ended only when industry underwent a massive expansion to re-arm the U.S. for World War II.

The current recession began in 2007, while Republicans were still in control of Congress and the White House, and reached its low point during the last months of the Bush presidency in 2008. It has persisted for almost two years since President Obama took office, with unemployment remaining stuck between 9 percent and 10 percent, despite energetic administration efforts to lower it. Economists predict that a full recovery will take at least another two to three years.

Republican have returned to power with promises to revitalize the economy and restore jobs by “cleaning up the mess in Washington.”

They will likely find it’s easier to ride the crest of a political wave than to withstand the force of an economic undertow.