Don't Worry. We'll build it again.

Don't worry.  We'll build it again.

Robert Samuelson is quickly becoming a favorite commentator of mine.  His no non-sense analysis, as opposed to the oft partisan prescriptions offered by other professional critics, is refreshing and helpful to those of us more interested in crafting a society that works rather than winning a fight.  Today's exemplar is no different.

WASHINGTON -- There are moments when our political system, whose essential job is to mediate conflicts in broadly acceptable and desirable ways, is simply not up to the task. It fails. This may be one of those moments. What we learned in 2011 is that the frustrating and confusing budget debate may never reach a workable conclusion. It may continue indefinitely until it's abruptly ended by a severe economic or financial crisis that wrenches control from elected leaders.
We are shifting from "give away politics" to "take away politics." Since World War II, presidents and Congresses have been in the enviable position of distributing more benefits to more people without requiring ever-steeper taxes. Now, this governing formula no longer works, and politicians face the opposite: taking away -- reducing benefits or raising taxes significantly -- to prevent government deficits from destabilizing the economy. It is not clear that either Democrats or Republicans can navigate the change.

Authors Neil Howe and William Strauss in their book The Fourth Turning (published 1997) have laid out a perspective on this unwinding of a settled political order that they term "unraveling" which occurs every 70 to 90 years.  The last time one order unraveled and another was built was through the Great Depression ending in the current "give away politics."  The previous unraveling/building was the Civil War and Reconstruction period.  Four score and seven years before that was the order resulting from the American revolution and Constitutional Congress.  

The changes we face in the coming decades is as likely to be as great as any of those that went before.  Whether they are as bloody depends upon us.  If the vested interests (corporations and recipients of income "redistributions") act like the slaveholders of two crises past and dig in their heels, it may be.  If they yield, like the industrial barons before FDR, then the violence can remain electoral and largely metaphorical.

Regardless, time keeps slipping into the future and the time is short to finish preparing to play our parts as individuals and members of communities during the decades of transitions before us.  Nothing insures individuals from extremism like a place of refuge in the midst of a storm.  History itself is too much for one individual or family guide but we can determine our role and place within history.  Communities can also determine their place within the broader narrative.  If a consensus grows, so can nations.

In other post-Christmas news the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries will be upon us soon and a season of electoral news will be unrelenting.

A users guide to Iowa and New Hampshire offered by the New Republic:

The Republican field is crowded and fluid right now, but it won’t be for long. By January 11th, there will be at most three remaining contenders, and we’ll have a much clearer understanding of how the race will develop.

There are seven candidates with a pulse, and only six of them—divided into two groups of three—are competing in Iowa. For two of the three denizens of the lower tier—Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum—failing to finish among the top three on January 3rd would spell the effective end of their candidacies. The third—Rick Perry—would probably have enough money left to stagger on to New Hampshire, but with the prospect of eventual success even further reduced from its current low level.

A Democrat, optimistically, foresees a repeat of Bush v. Gore:

The 2012 presidential race will be decided in a dozen swing states, and President Obama faces a hard road to victory in many of them.

“It appears this election will be much more like Bush-Gore” in 2000, said Democratic strategist Steve McMahon, co-founder of Alexandria-based Purple Strategies. “The president ain’t gonna win by 95 electoral votes.”

In a development that creates mixed feelings in me, Newt Gingrich also sees this election in terms of epochal change and conflict.  If only his character and temperament were not so unpredictable, I'd have my candidate for 2012.  Maybe he'll wind up Energy Secretary or chief speech writer in a Romney administration.

WASHINGTON -- At a moment when the nation wonders whether politicians can agree on anything, here is something that unites the Republican presidential candidates -- and all of them with President Obama: Everyone agrees that the 2012 election will be a turning point involving one of the most momentous choices in American history.
True, candidates (and columnists) regularly cast the impending election as the most important ever. Campaigning last week in Pella, Iowa, Republican Rick Santorum acknowledged as much. But he insisted that this time, the choice really was that fundamental. "The debate," he said, "is about who we are."

 Speaking not far away in Mount Pleasant, Newt Gingrich went even further, and was more specific. "This is the most important election since 1860," he said, "because there's such a dramatic difference between the best food-stamp president in history and the best paycheck candidate." Thus did Gingrich combine historic sweep with a cheap and inaccurate attack. Nonetheless, it says a great deal that Gingrich chose to reach all the way back to the election that helped spark the Civil War.

New political orders can, I suppose, look a lot like those of the past.  Whatever else we might think of Ron Paul, he is the one Republican candidate which seems to garner support from both extremes of the current divide.  What remains is a catalyst to make him palatable to the vast middle.  Personally, I like his views.  I'm still, however, trying to overcome my fear of change before I could embrace a newly isolationist America.

In this year's GOP presidential track meet it seems that everyone gets a turn in front -- and this week Ron Paul is the lucky candidate. While still trailing in the national race numbers, recent poll results from Iowa suggest that, two weeks until caucus day, Paul has jumped into the lead there ahead of the water-treading Mitt Romney and the sinking Newt Gingrich.

Paul brings a unusual set of views to the Republican presidential sweepstakes -- on almost every core national security and foreign-policy issue he holds a position that is in fierce opposition to the views of mainstream Republicans.

Indeed, his entire philosophy is largely a renunciation of much of what Republicans believe about America's role in the world. He questions the popular notion of American exceptionalism and has argued in his recently published book, Liberty Defended, that the "United States is an empire by any definition, and quite possibly the most aggressive, extended, and expansionist in the history of the world." This is the kind of language that might cause Ronald Reagan to roll over in his grave.

Jon Huntsman is frequently observed as getting every issue right but can not seem to get his moment in the media spotlight.  I guess this just goes to show that life never deviates too far from Jr. High.  The bad boys get the girls and the class clowns get the attention.  The rich kids get encouraged to advanced placement and the quiet "good" kids gets to sit in the back, reading an encyclopedia for fun.  Whoops, am I projecting again?

Three years after the near implosion of the economy, the nation’s largest banks continue to exist as financial skyscrapers on the landscape, their collapse threatening to rain destruction on all the lesser players. The memory of that frightening September, when then-President George W. Bush was told by advisers that immediate government intervention was necessary, may be fading already. Yet the threat of the bankruptcy or near-bankruptcy of a handful of banks and insurance companies continues as the nation’s economy slowly recovers.

Among the abiding disagreements in my marriage is the role of the full moon in the number and severity of hospital admissions.  If your year did not involve enough math or you want another demonstration of a yes/no questions answered with a statistical "it depends," perhaps this series of blog posts from the Guardian is for you.

I was a particularly cowardly child. I'm not such a brave adult either, but the subjects of my cowardice have changed somewhat. As an adult I'm more scared of losing my job in a recession or having my identity stolen on the internet. As a child, I was terrified of werewolves. Every full moon I would worry about being on the wrong end of gnashing, razor-sharp teeth.
Of course I shouldn't have been any more worried when there was a full moon than on any other night. Or should I? A classic article in the British Medical Journal sought to answer a similar question: are crime rates higher when there's a full moon?

Science is all about formulating and testing hypotheses. In this case the hypothesis would be: "Crime rates are higher when there's a full moon." Often, scientists set out to test the "null hypothesis": the default statement that, if true, would indicate that their experiment had not detected any real effect. In the case in question, the null hypothesis could be expressed as: "There is no difference in crime rates when there is a full moon compared with other nights."
The problem with data like crime rates is that it contains random noise – patterns can appear and disappear by chance alone. So we first need to ask ourselves how sure we want to be that there is a real difference between crime rates on a full moon and those on any other night. Quite sure? Fairly sure? Almost certain?