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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?
