Even though Mayor Michael Bloomberg broke records for campaign spending, New York City's richest citizen was elected to a third term by a surprisingly small margin.

In fact, Bloomberg's spending nearly $100 million of his own money was itself a turnoff to voters. So was a cleverly engineered change in election laws to permit this third term.

The biggest factor in the mayor's narrow victory, however, seems to have been restlessness in the electorate. The same restlessness shaped other outcomes, as well.

Spin masters immediately chortled and huffed, and variously portrayed Tuesday's results as a rejection of President Obama's agenda or as rejection of "no-idea" Republicans.

But it was events later in the week that probably explained the election: the announcement of another surge in unemployment to truly frightening levels; discouraging signs of systemic corruption in Afghanistan; resumption of over-the-top extravagance in financial sector compensation; a health-care reform debate dominated by name-calling and misdirection; and an Army psychiatrist's killing spree at Fort Hood, Texas.

This wasn't just bad news or big news. It was baffling news.

On the one hand the blue-chip financial sector is apparently awash in profits (thanks to American taxpayers) and determined to grab every penny for themselves, and on the other hand American families continue their descent into tribulation not seen since the Great Depression. Does the one hand not even care what the other is doing?

On the one hand American soldiers are thrust into cultural, political and religious conflicts that defy our understanding, and on the other hand a psychiatrist charged with treating those soldiers when they return home loses his own grip on sanity.

Large corporations are hoarding cash, rather than hiring back the workers whose taxes stimulated that cash flow. Meanwhile, latter-day Know Nothings whip worried citizens into rage against officialdom.

Average citizens can be excused for asking, "Where are the grownups?"

Where are the statesmen? Where are the sober and community-minded? Where are the smart people who apply their minds to actual problems?

We have bridges and highways that need rebuilding, jobless men and women who are desperate for work, a shameful health care system, schools that need quality teachers, drug-resistant diseases, and a public stage increasingly occupied by intolerance and scapegoating --- and the best we can do is Silicon Valley's quest for the next iPod?

I think people take their lives more seriously than that. They aren't the gullible fools that political flamethrowers on television and radio take them to be. They see an increasingly complex and volatile world, and they understand that challenging realities require capable leadership and hard work. What they don't see are a sufficiency of capable leaders who grasp critical issues, put the public's interest ahead of their own, and call forth decency and sacrifice from citizens.

And so we get voting results that say, in the words of Mercutio, "A plague o' both your houses."

Such nihilism can't play out well. A shout of "No!" simply isn't an adequate response to the severity of what we face. Nor do we need a domineering "savior" to ride to our rescue.

In a complex system like ours, we need capable, imaginative, humble and selfless leaders at every level. To raise up those leaders, we need to stop demonizing our own government, and we need to see public service as a noble pursuit.

Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of "Just Wondering, Jesus," and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is www.morningwalkmedia.com.