Parts to Wholes: the Socionomic Systems Nexus

Now that we've had some time (can you believe it's basically just a week since the Inaugural Speech - it seems like months ago !) let's stop and consider it. The general quick take of the punditocracy seems to be that it was a good, even very good, speech without flights of soaring rhetoric but with a sober, realistic and grounded call to arms. We sort of agree but think they missed a lot of it being too narrow in their interpretations, for one thing, and not able to step back and listen to what they really heard. In fact our take differs somewhat from theirs on several levels, both rhetorical and substantive. On the latter the speech deserves to be parsed out and analyzed line by line - which we intend to do at a future date. There was a huge amount of substance but it was entirely consistent with our prior takes on the Grant Park speech, the nomination acceptance speech and what came out of the debates. Perhaps one of the most substantive we've ever heard. On the rhetorical front the standards of comparison were JFK, FDR and Lincoln, particularly the latter's second Inaugural. Quite a standard, yet in each case they were ill-received at the time. In fact so was the Gettysburg Address. Our opinion is that there were plenty of rhetorical and policy points that worked well together.

Call for Responsibility

By this time you've probably heard the old story, true to our knowledge, that the Chinese ideogram for Crisis is the composite of the ones for Crisis and Opportunity. Which seems to perfectly capture the times and the speech. As Rhammie puts it, "never waste a good crisis...do what you've been putting off and couldn't get support for it." That pretty well captures a central message. Woven thruout the entire speech in fact was the charge/argument/what have you that we all bear and bore responsibility for these multiple crisis, not just a few fat cats. A point we've argued several (many ?) time before and one which stands up to severe scrutiny. Any time you bought a new giant TV using your house as an ATM machine or lived on 0% savings you were part and parcel of this whole shebang. We all rode this gravey train for at least the last 30 years and put off facing the hard decisions (  Party on Grasshopper: Digging Deeper....into the Policy Agendi, Inside the Sausage Factory: the 4P's of Political Reality). Instead of posting the speech itself though we're going to let someone else put it in a nutshell - Samuel L. Jackson speaking/acting as the real life Coach Carter.(IF there are some technical problems with the pop-up the highlighted section takes you hopefully to the trailer - which speaks amazingly well to our basic points. Otherwise search YouTube for "Coach Carter").

Listen to it and you'll hear in a lot blunter language what the President told us. We can work our way out of these messes. It's not going to be easy and it's not going to be quick and it will take hard work, discipline, sacrifices and, MOST ESPECIALLY, working for someone besides our own selves. We are a team in other words or we're going to be road kill. Or, as one the Founding Fathers put, "Gentlemen, we must all work together or we will surely all hang separately !" We're all big people now and need to take responsiblity for our own decisions and the consequences.

Values for the Future

One of the best moments for us, among many, was where the President challenged us to rest our efforts on fundamental values, built on the historic values that made this country great. This is what he said:

For as much as government can do, and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends -- honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.

What is demanded, then, is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

At heart this is, as Coach Carter has it, a call to suck it up. We've chatted before on the fundamental requirements for peace and prosperity of a grounded and workable set of values. The accompanying graphic is taken from that post (  Stories We Tell Ourselves: Values, Culture and Change,  From Griffindor to Tatoonie: Searching for Good Ground in a Groundless World) so we won't repeat our discussion. But at the end of the day the central question here is what ground do you stand on ? One way or another we are, "each and every one", going to find out ! For sure, for sure.

One final observation or look back if you would, the prior post (From Misconception to Collective Affirmation: the Inaugural Renewal) was looking forward to the speech but also looked back before to the values, risks and actions that made this country. In our book the Inaugural answered the mail, completely, thoroughly and on every point. It was indeed a call for renewal ! After the break you'll find a three-part readings collection: some lead-ins that set the expectations, some selections from some pundits who got it better than most IOHO, and the most important section. A set of key readings on the new Civil Society we need to build the world we'd like to live. Those are the ones I particularly think you ought to read.

Back in the day, so-to-speak, someone who had full legal rights as a Roman Citizen was said to be part of the CIVITAS. But Civitas implied much more than privileges and rights...it also implied and implies duty and obligation. Most especially it implied that a good citizen would act to properly balance their own narrow interests with a proper concern for the well-being of the city and the state. For all one's fellow citizens...Barry is asking us to renew our Civitas in a modern age.

The Lead Ins

I Wish You Were Here And so it has happened, this very strange convergence. The holiday celebrating the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became, in the midnight hour, the day that America inaugurates its first black president. It’s a day on which smiles will give way to tears and then return quickly to smiles again, a day of celebration and reflection. Dr. King would have been 80 years old now. He came to national prominence not trying to elect an African-American president, but just trying to get us past the depraved practice of blacks being forced to endure the humiliation of standing up and giving their seat on a bus to a white person, some man or woman or child. There are so many, like Dr. King, who I wish could have stayed around to see this day. Some were famous. Most were not. I remember talking several years ago with James Farmer, one of the big four civil rights leaders of the mid-20th century. (The others were Dr. King, Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young.) Farmer died in 1999. Imagine if he could somehow be seated in a place of honor at the inauguration alongside Dr. King and Mr. Wilkins and Mr. Young. Imagine the stories and the mutual teasing and the laughter, and the deep emotion that would accompany their attempts to rise above their collective disbelief at the astonishing changes they did so much to bring about. And then imagine a tall white man being ushered into their presence, and the warm smiles of recognition from the big four — and probably tears — for someone who has been shamefully neglected by his nation and his party, Lyndon Johnson. Johnson’s contributions to the betterment of American life were nothing short of monumental. Without Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama and so many others would have traveled a much more circumscribed path. I wish Johnson could be there, his commitment to civil rights so publicly vindicated, his eyes no doubt misting as the oath of office is administered. It’s so easy, now that the moronic face of racism is so seldom openly displayed, to forget how far we’ve really come. When Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech” at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, it was illegal, just a stone’s throw away in Virginia, for whites and blacks to marry.

100 Days: Kennedy’s Words, Obama’s Challenge It was an anxious time, the beginning of 1961. In the eight years before Jan. 20, 1961, the Soviet Union had tested a hydrogen bomb and had put in orbit the first satellite, Sputnik, which passed over the United States for months. Central Intelligence Agency analysts estimated the the Soviet economy was growing at a rate of between 6 percent and 10 percent a year, compared with the United States’ growth rate of between 2 percent and 3 percent. Unemployment in America was at 7 percent and the country had gone into recession early in 1960. Now, this day, the youngest man and the first Catholic ever elected, 43-year-old John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, was to be inaugurated as the 35th President of the United States. Kennedy had defeated Vice President Richard Nixon in one of the closest of national elections, but the country was united — by fear. For the first time since early in the 19th century, the United States mainland seemed vulnerable to foreign invasion. Nearly 20 new countries, most of the former colonies in Asia and Africa, joined the United Nations in 1960 and most of them were looking for guidance not to the Americans but to the Soviets. So, it was not surprising that the new President would give an inaugural speech that was essentially a cold war battle cry. “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans … Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.” The words rang, still do in television excerpts and classrooms. Kennedy was a man who knew that in his new job, words were often more important than deeds. Few people would remember whether he balanced the budget. Almost all Americans would remember his lines, particularly, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” The speech was bellicose and conciliatory at the same time: “Now the trumpet summons us again — not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not a call to battle,though embattled we are — but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out …” “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate …”

Judgements

Declarations: Meet President Obama  This is what Mr. Obama said:

In a time when all wonder if our nation's best days are behind us, we need to know that the answer is no. We continue. We go on. This is not journey's end. That, I think, is what the-18 minute speech came down to. Are we in a difficult moment? Yes, it is a time of "gathering clouds and raging storms." There is "a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights." We face great challenges, but "know this, America—they will be met." How? We will meet them by being who we are. Our success depends on the American "values" of "hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism." He said, "These things are old. These things are true." Like those who've long fought in our armed forces, Americans have shown "a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves." It was a moderate speech both in tone and content, a serious and solid speech. The young Democrat often used language with which traditional Republicans would be thoroughly at home: The American story has never been one of "shortcuts or settling for less," the journey "has not been . . . for the fainthearted—for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasure of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things" who have created the best of our enduring history. Obama named in stark terms America's essential foe: "For those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror . . . we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you." This had the authentic sound of a man who's been getting daily raw intelligence briefings and is not amused.

It was not an especially moving or rousing speech, but the event itself, the first major address of a new president from a new generation and a previously unrepresented race, was inherently moving. The speech was low-key, sober. There was not a sentence or thought that hit you in the chest and entered your head not to leave. But it was worthy, had weight, and was adult. In fact, Mr. Obama lauded a certain kind of maturity: "In the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things." This was a call for a new nobility that puts aside "petty grievances and false promises" that have marked the oral culture of our modern political life. He seemed to be saying that the old, pointless partisanship of the past does not fit the current moment.

I don't know what the networks will use as the sound bite, that rather ugly word, now some 35 years old, that speaks of the short piece of audio- or videotape they will use to show the highlight of the speech, or capture its essence. This is not all bad. When a speech is so calm and cool that you have to read it to absorb it fully, the speech just may get read. This was not the sound of candidate Barack Obama but President Obama, not the sound of the man who appealed to the left wing of his party but one attempting to appeal to the center of the nation. It was not a joyous, audacious document, not a call to arms, but a reasoned statement by a Young Sobersides.

Putting an End to Magical Thinking But I worry that there is more magical thinking afoot than the president realizes. Magical thinking can be defined as a perversion of traditional American optimism. Magical thinking is the can-do attitude without the do. It's faith without works, to borrow a Biblical verse. And it has played a key role in shaping the economic crisis. We know those days are gone. The jig is up. And the economy has to be transformed by genuine, hard-working optimists instead of magical thinkers. This will start with how we choose to frame our losses, says psychologist Denise Cummins, who teaches at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. "That's the silver lining -- how will you frame this or describe this to yourself," Cummins says. "Whether you couch it in a disaster framework or it's-a-challenge-but-I'll-get-through has a whopping effect on your endocrine system. If you say it's the end of world or that you are stupid and it will never get better again, you're going to keep shooting more and more cortisol and adrenaline through your system, and if you do it long enough, you'll build more receptors for bad hormones. "Ruminating can actually exacerbate the damage. Instead, tell yourself another story. If you put it in terms of a challenge -- what can be done, where do you go from here, and what you have left that's still good -- you dampen all these hormonal effects."  Then ruminate on the words of President Obama in his inaugural address: "In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted -- for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom." Here's a toast to the end of magical thinking.

The Choice of Herakles  

The Long-term Implications

The Conservative Revival The British conservative renovation begins with this insight: The central political debate of the 20th century was over the role of government. The right stood for individual freedom while the left stood for extending the role of the state. But the central debate of the 21st century is over quality of life. In this new debate, it is necessary but insufficient to talk about individual freedom. Political leaders have to also talk about, as one Tory politician put it, “the whole way we live our lives.” That means, first, moving beyond the Thatcherite tendency to put economics first. As Oliver Letwin, one of the leading Tory strategists put it: “Politics, once econo-centric, must now become socio-centric.” David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, makes it clear that his primary focus is sociological. Last year he declared: “The great challenge of the 1970s and 1980s was economic revival. The great challenge in this decade and the next is social revival.” In another speech, he argued: “We used to stand for the individual. We still do. But individual freedoms count for little if society is disintegrating. Now we stand for the family, for the neighborhood — in a word, for society.”Annual Conservative Party Conference Address by British Party Leader David Cameron

The hard, cruel party. How does that sound? The next government - whether Conservative or not - will face very hard decisions about public spending. It will have to reduce some services, refuse pleas for assistance, make redundancies, turn down worthwhile new ideas. Some people will be hurt who have done little or nothing to deserve being hurt. It is hard to see what accompanying these tough calls with a harsh demeanour will achieve. But getting the tone right is not merely about being civilised and sympathetic. It is central to Tory policy towards the State. One of David Cameron's constant refrains is that he believes in a stronger society, but not a stronger State. This is often dismissed as meaningless, but is, in fact, the opposite. It is a big idea, but very hard to implement.

PUBLIC LIVES; A Liberal With New Emphasis on Old Values AMERICA'S moral decline, real or illusionary, is at the heart of the current culture wars. And as these wars polarize the nation and dominate much of the political debate, a few trigger words instantly place people on either side of the divide. The right tends to talk about morality and values, while the left invokes evolving mores and personal rights. It is hard, therefore, to label David Callahan, a liberal who argues that America has lost its moral compass. He warns that the country must recapture the solid bourgeois values that once guided business leaders, and he says the cheating and lying from Wall Street to university exam rooms are unraveling the fabric of the nation. That kind of scolding may sound odd coming from the left, but Mr. Callahan seems intent on wresting moral issues out of the hands of conservatives. Liberals, he says, should wake up to the rot in the country, fight against its pervasiveness and stake out moral values as their own turf.

The social psychology revolution is reaching its tipping point It took a long time. Longer than it should have. But in the end, the penny dropped. Back in the 1980s, Tony Blair, a junior Shadow minister, was sitting quietly with his constituency agent, John Burton, when he suddenly exclaimed: “You know, John, I understand it all. Finally, I've got it.” When Burton asked him what he was talking about, Blair triumphantly replied: “Microeconomics!”  Twenty years later the remark seems charmingly naive. Could a Labour spokesman with an economic portfolio really have been so pleased to understand the basic ideas of supply and demand, pricing and competition? But at the time it was a considerable intellectual achievement for a politician of the Left, and it was to prove an important political moment too. I wonder whether in a couple of decades' time, our own fumbling first acquaintance with new thinking will appear similarly amusing. For an intellectual revolution is under way that will change the way we think about public policy just as the free market economists did in the 1980s. I wonder whether one day soon a future party leader will turn round to his agent and say: “Finally, I've got it! Human behaviour.” Behind this publishing explosion, with its PR hoopla, is real and solid intellectual progress. It comes from two streams of thought, developing alongside each other. The first is the idea of evolutionary psychology. The breakthrough came with E.O. Wilson's controversial work Sociobiology, first published in 1975. Since then a number of academics, including familiar names such as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, have illuminated aspects of human behaviour by explaining how they arise from our Darwinian struggle. For example, we reciprocate favours because we are the genetic descendants of those who survived to breed because they reciprocated favours. Why was this work controversial? Because it argued that behaviour is partly inherited, offending against those who believe that we are born completely free of such influence. As Pinker explains in his unmissable book The Blank Slate, the critics have really lost the battle, even if they haven't given up. The second stream of thought is behavioural economics. For twenty years now, some economists have been looking at the psychology of economic decision-making. Instead of seeing humans as rational calculating machines, behavioural economists have been conducting experiments to assess how real choices are made. On paper, two alternatives may look economically identical. But the way that they are framed and the context will, in the real world, determine the choice. Human beings are, for instance, highly loss-averse. They will take risks to avoid a loss, while behaving conservatively when a possible gain is in the offing.

The Politics of Cohesion In 1962, Daniel Bell published a book called “The End of Ideology.” The title struck a nerve because it reflected the view, common at the time, that the United States was about to leave behind the brutal, ideological politics that had characterized the 1930s and the early cold war. The 1960s, it was believed, would be a decade of cool pragmatism. Keynesian models would be used to scientifically regulate the economy. Important decisions would be made empirically. Instead, we got what Francis Fukuyama later called The Great Disruption. The information economy began to disrupt the industrial economy. The feminist revolution disrupted gender and family relations. The civil rights revolution disrupted social arrangements. The Vietnam War discredited the establishment. These disruptions were generally necessary and good, but the transition was painful. People lost faith in old social norms, but new ones had not yet emerged. The result was disorder. Divorce rates skyrocketed. Crime rates exploded. Faith in institutions collapsed. Social trust cratered. As community bonds dissolved, individual autonomy asserted itself. Liberals championed the moral liberation of individuals. Conservatives championed their economic liberation. The combined result was a loss of community and social cohesion, and what Christopher Lasch called a culture of narcissism. Instead of ending ideology, the Great Disruption produced ideological politics. The weakening of social norms led to fierce battles as groups vied to create new ones. Personal became political. Groups fought over basic patterns of morality. In the cultural realm, the Great Disruption came to an end. New social norms and patterns settled into place. Barack Obama exemplifies the social repair. The product of a scattered family, he has created a highly traditional one, headed by two professionally accomplished adults. To an almost eerie extent, he exemplifies discipline, equipoise and self-control. Under his leadership, as Peter Beinart noted in Time, Democrats came to seem like the party of order while Republicans were associated with disorder. Obama’s challenge will be to translate the social repair that has occurred over the past decade into political and governing repair.

Practicing the Spirit: Respect, Tolerance and CivitasWhat are Leaders without Followers ? No one can be a George Washington without being able to persuade others that  the path they want to walk is the right one. In fact the best leadership is that which helps the group (the society) find and express that path and commit to it with energy. Yet at the same time helps to shape it, stimulates the emergence of the best and guides its' development.What are Leaders without Followers ? No one can be a George Washington without being able toIn other words there is an interaction with the citizens of a society which shapes the future and the character of the citizenry is as important as that of the leaders. In fact they are co-dependent and co-evolutionary. There are many qualities we could consider but three stand out, in my mind: Respect, Tolerance and Civitas. We explore those qualities more below but before digging in let's look at the principles of conduct, personal and social, enunciated by another great man. Before naming him let us frame the situation by looking to William James:

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In her weekly column in last weekend's WSJ Peggy Noonan talks about the Inaugural and what it means to her, starting with tearing up as she flies in and sees the great monuments to our historic past. She continues by dissecting things a little bit, admitting that there's going to be a lot of hoopla, maneuverings, posturing and politics. Even, perhaps, some cynical manipulations, or three, in the days to come by various parties. She closes with the appeal that "we suspend our disbelief". That is we don't just watch a series of public ceremonies, a swearing in and a multi-hour parade by everybody from the Old Guard to high-school bands selected more for who they are than how good they are, but we suspend our modern cynicisms, our disbeliefs. While taking her point, even understanding it and agreeing with the surface logic, it bothered me enormously. Suspend our disbelief ?

NO, absolutely not. While we don't always agree with Noonan we've always found her insights and humanity to be worthy. In this case, though, we must vehemently disagree with her fundamental premise. If we've learned anything in this last election cycle it is that we are all children of our deepest, unconscious emotions. Our lizard-brains, as it were. Yet we also know that our lizard-brains are both trainable and disciplinable. We also know that our most fervent beliefs and values reside not in our higher rational processes but in our deepest and oldest human characteristics.

Instead of suspending disbelief we should instead be affirming our beliefs. No matter how hokey, maudlin or manipulative these Inaugural events and celebrations might seem they are recognition of some of the best that is in us. And of some of our highest ideals and greatest achievements. If you don't think so then we urge you to listen to HBO's broadcast of Sunday's Inaugural Celebration.For which we thank them for broadcasting, online and now making available (in case it disppears you can find some YouTube clips from which this picture is taken).

The Miracle That Was and Is

Now the analyst in us suggests that the carefully, artfully and well-crafted Celebration be parsed out a bit. And if you listen carefully, over and above enjoying the music, the peformances, and the speeches you'll find several recurrent themes. Reinforced by the musical choices. If you want to know the tone this administration intends to set, what it's major philosophies will be you'll hear all you need to know. All of which we agree with from "we can face our challenges" to "we are one" to the emphasis on the dignity and value of work, the need for people to be self-responsible and for government to help finding opportunity and lifting the burdens that prevent them from achieving these goals. While also asking each and every one of us to bear our share.

But no matter our problems they continue to pale in comparison to what we've faced historically. Serendipitously the HBO mini-series "John Adams" is now out on DVD and in my local rental shop. Renting it this last weekend couldn't have been better timed. It's a very real, gritty, accurate and honest portrait of the people, times, challenges and events. But it also showcases how our Founding Fathers (& Mothers) were motivated by their ideals, governed by their values and dedicated themselves to making this a better world. Beyond that we all take too much of this for granted. When they started their deaths by hanging were more likely - they were after all 13 small colonies taking on the mightiest and most powerful Empire in the world. More than that they were creating a Republic from scratch by their own decision. Something never before done in human history.

Re-read that last line. As we stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before us we forget what leaps of faith and imagination and courage were required for their achievements. The man who first made the "shoulders" comparison was Issac Newton who's own work on the Principles of Gravity required a conceptual leap, that action at a distance without a physical connection, was possible and what organized the Universe. That was an act of insight, intellect and Faith for which there was no logical or rational basis at the time.

The act of deciding that we would be governed by ourselves, in a form we crafted, that we would be dedicated to the enabling the "pursuit of inalienable rights" for all was an even bigger act of Faith.

So don't supsend you disblief this week - affirm your Faith.

After the break we provide a YouTube playlist of the Adams series but if you listen to nothing else listen to the clip that is embedded in the accompanying picture. John Adams gives the most pointed statement of that fundamental faith that we've ever heard. And take his message - the Faith that created, not just moved, a nation and pay it forward.

Renewal, Affirmation, Confirmation 

YouTube video playlist of selected clips from the John Adams HBO mini-series. Watch what you’d like but taken all together it’s a great portrait offering insight, historical accuracy, a realistic and unvarnished look instead of a rosy one. And will make you appreciate the miracle that is our country. But if you watch nothing else watch the header(s) which will at least provide you an overview and introduction and this one speech:

• John Adams speech before the Continental Congress on Freedom and the reading of The Declaration Of Independence

Declarations: Suspend Your Disbelief – Peggy Noonan Flying in, we take the route over the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson, the Tidal Basin: the signs and symbols of the great republic. And you've seen it all a thousand times but you can't stop looking, and you can't help it, your eyes well. After a minute you realize you must have a moony look on your face, and you lean back. The lady to your right, engrossed in a paperback of "Marley & Me," sees nothing. Your gaze continues across the aisle, and you see another woman looking out the window in the same way, avidly taking it in. Her view includes the Capitol. She leans back. I know her. A woman of the Reagan era, an old acquaintance, and when we land we greet each other. "Isn't it something that no matter how many times you see it, it still grabs your heart?" I say. She responds, wonderingly, "I never see it that I'm not moved. To this day." We are grownups, we have seen limits and imperfections, compromises and mess, and yet this brilliant thing endures. Lincoln will always be Lincoln, and nothing can mess that up. What is required for full enjoyment of an inauguration, from opening prayers to speeches to marching bands is, in the great 19th-century phrase, the willing suspension of disbelief. If you don't put your skepticism aside, you will not fully absorb and experience the drama. You must allow it to be real for you. Those two young people on the stage did not really take poison and die, but Romeo and fair Juliet did, and that is the reason the audience, which knows the actors still live, says, with genuine feeling, "Oh, no!"

To believe, suspend disbelief. We have been through this before, the flags and fine speeches, the brass donkey paperweight, the glass elephant, the rise and fall of administrations, the coming and going of figures great and small. It's good to put that aside for a few days, to remove yourself from politics, partisanship and faction, to suspend your disbelief, to be grateful that the signs and symbols endure, as does the republic, and raise a toast: "To the president of the United States."

Two Stars, Meeting Across a Bible When Chief Justice John Roberts swears in Barack Obama, variants on a post-’60s life will converge. What is most striking about the two men who will meet at arm’s length, the Lincoln Bible between them, is the difference in the paths that brought them to this moment. In this tableau, they represent two faces of a generation that grew to adulthood after Vietnam, after the fantasies and tragedies of the 1960s, after the civil rights marches were over, when the cities were still smoldering but no longer burning. Those who set out on their adult journeys in the 1980s, as both John Roberts and Barack Obama did, inherited an ambiguous legacy that required them to assign their own meaning to the unfulfilled promises of the era that faded with their adolescence.

Let's Renew America Together – Colin Powell Next week marks a fresh start for our nation. Whatever one's political leanings, each presidential inauguration is an opportunity for Americans to renew the energy required to deal with the challenges we face -- never more so than when the challenges we face are without precedent. Over the course of their transition, President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden have spoken with confidence and acted with competence. They've unveiled their plans for governing -- plans that recognize it will require federal money to solve our economic problems at home, and diplomatic and military skill to meet our obligations abroad. But they also realize an equally important truth. While government has a role to play in restoring the American dream at home and rekindling the dream that is America abroad, there are limits to its ability to restore our sense of purpose as a nation. That task falls to us. Particularly in hard times like these, we are charged with living up to our shared responsibility to one another. My experience is that in times of need, the American people recognize that when one of our fellow citizens is suffering, those of us with the power to ease or eliminate that suffering should come forward. This is not a time to retreat to our homes and wait until it's safe to emerge. It is the time to give more, to step forward and serve our fellow citizens, and to reach into the reservoir of this nation's unrivaled capacity for good. That's why, at this moment of great purpose, Mr. Obama has chosen the eve of his inauguration to launch "Renew America Together," his call for all Americans to make an ongoing commitment to better the lives of others in their communities and their country. It's fitting that he will do this on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day when we honor the legacy of a man who lived his life in service to others and believed that "everybody can be great, because anybody can serve."

The Afterlife of Near-Death From the shore and TV screens, the evacuation of a US Airways jet that ditched in the Hudson River on Thursday looked almost stage-managed, a slow-motion rescue complete with heroes and zero death. But on the inside — and inside the passenger’s heads — the action was far wilder. No one knew how long that plane would stay afloat, and those with a strong imagination surely glimpsed what could come: icy water moving shoulder high and higher; a shrinking, dark pocket of air; bobbing heads wheezing their last breaths. One man stripped to his underwear, in case he needed to swim; a mother climbed over seats with her baby to avoid a stampede. Recollections of brushes with death are often infused with a quality close to madness. For whatever churning consumed the minds of those 155 people on board, they were just as responsible for their own escape as were the police and rescuers. “That pilot was a hero, fabulously trained, and the flight attendants, too,” said Lee Clarke, a sociologist at Rutgers University and author of “Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination,” “but if those people didn’t keep their wits about them, they would not have made it — they were heroes, too.” Like survivors of many previous emergencies, including 9/11 and the evacuation of an Air France flight that skidded off a runway in Toronto and crashed in 2005, they did not lose control. They were civilized and practical, whether obsessing about God, glory or the garage.

• After Splash, Nerves, Heroics and Comedy

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There's a fairly well known cartoon of two scientists working out a problem on a chalkboard covered with complex equations and down in the corner is a little circle with the key step inserted in small print - "and then a miracle occurs". Wouldn't it be nice if we could take the same short-cut to fixing the horrendous shopping list of significant challenges we all face ? There's another sort of urban myth that the Chinese character for Crisis is composed of the two characters for risk and opportunity. That pretty well describes our situation - so much so that it's becoming a semi-common theme among the commentariat. Which doesn't stop it from being very....very accurate. We've muddled along for the better part of two decades deferring action on key strategic initiatives from energy to healthcare to education to the economy because the apparent cost of fixing known problems was far greater than the experienced pain of hunching along. Fortunately for us we're no longer in that position. In prior posts (Populist Panderings, the Candidates and Real Solutions, Hit the Decks aRunnin...Git 'er Done Barry, Changes and Challenges: a New Year Unlike Most Others) we've inventoried and analyzed what needs to be done, how the incoming President is approaching things and the major barriers to finding daylight to run to. Now it's time to knuckle down and get 'er done, starting of course with vital steps on short-term economic fixes to lay the groundwork for long-term solutions (First Things: Financial Crisis, Economy and Barry) that put us back on a growth track. With all that in mind let's consider what some of those long-term steps are and how they inter-act.

Strategic Economic Policy

Presuming we get thru the next two years of continuing economic crisis and get the economy back on track the real challenge we'll face (we should be so lucky) will be to get the long-term structural trend of the US economy headed upward again. In a nutshell that means creating enough new high-value jobs so that the average worker can find one with a rising income. Conversely that worker has to have the necessary qualifications. Taken all together there are a lot of moving pieces which need to work together as we've tried to show in the accompanying graphic. There was a day when P&G was an innovative growth company because having a clothewasher was a big new deal. In other words the right kinds of new jobs come from innovation in new products and industries and we need to look at Energy, the Biosciences and Materials. Imagine new solar panels that are cheap, affordable or new biologically derived bacterial production of alternative fuels and you get the idea. Our ability to do all that is dependent on establishing a secure and peaceful world where we minimize the impact on the environment, not end up in a series of on-going conflicts over water rights, oil or other resources.

Strategic Domestic Policy

 Contrary to current popular belief nobody has come up with any better way to feed, house and support more people more effectively than a free-market economy. Contrary to dead and dying shibboleths however nobody has come up with a way to have efficient markets in a vacuum. They require a legal system, secure property rights and a certain sense of peace and security. As all to many places around the globe show by terrible counter-example right now. Which really means we need to find the right balance of government regulation to let markets work well where they do and constrain them within those limits...and that's not just an observation about the Finance Industry, our current poster-child of run amok self-interest. It also applies to health, safety, the environment and on and on. So finding the right mechanisms and designing new generations of public institutions that provide the right incentives for the kinds of behaviors we want is a critical dependency we need to address. Oddly enough if you look at the prior posts where we inventory and analyze the range of domestic policy challenges in Education, Healthcare and so on as well as the institutional barriers to success we come full circle. If we want to reform Healthcare or Education we need to find a way not just to have nice ideas about what we'd like to have. Or even constructive ones about how we'd like to implement those ideas. Instead we need to create the incentives that get us the most bang for the buck ! Consider Healthcare for example - the 46 million people who are un-insured don't necessarily lack some health coverage per se. If they show up at a hospital they'll be treated. Which means the folks who are paying insurance are subsidizing them. Done that way we're probably paying 2-3X what the real cost of providing good care for everyone would be. We could work our way thru all our other key areas of concern and likely reach similar conclusions.

The Will and the Way

As usual we'll end up circling back to a point we keep re-discovering. At the end of the day a lot of this turns out to be up to us. The reason we drifted thru the '90s until we ended up facing this decade's terrible consequences is that nobody was willing to change. Now we'll find out if the troubles are serious enough to get from MEISM to WEISM.

So how do we work smarter instead of working harder and harder just to keep falling farther and farther behind ? Again the answer - build the right kind of incentives to get everybody to act in our collective interest rather than maintain perverse incentives where everybody chases only their own narrow interests. There's lots more to it than that of course but much of the technical details we already know how to do - there's no invention required. What we've lacked is the will and the way.

Economic Policy

Paul Krugman: Fighting Off Depression  “If we don’t act swiftly and boldly,” declared President-elect Barack Obama in his latest weekly address, “we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment.” If you ask me, he was understating the case. The fact is that recent economic numbers have been terrifying, not just in the United States but around the world. Manufacturing, in particular, is plunging everywhere. Banks aren’t lending; businesses and consumers aren’t spending. Let’s not mince words: This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression. So will we “act swiftly and boldly” enough to stop that from happening? We’ll soon find out. The biggest problem facing the Obama plan, however, is likely to be the demand of many politicians for proof that the benefits of the proposed public spending justify its costs — a burden of proof never imposed on proposals for tax cuts. This is a problem with which Keynes was familiar: giving money away, he pointed out, tends to be met with fewer objections than plans for public investment “which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict ‘business’ principles.” What gets lost in such discussions is the key argument for economic stimulus — namely, that under current conditions, a surge in public spending would employ Americans who would otherwise be unemployed and money that would otherwise be sitting idle, and put both to work producing something useful. All of this leaves me concerned about the prospects for the Obama plan. I’m sure that Congress will pass a stimulus plan, but I worry that the plan may be delayed and/or downsized. And Mr. Obama is right: We really do need swift, bold action. Pres.-Elect Obama Economic Speech , A conversation about Obama's economic stimulus package

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Well Prezelect Barry has pretty well made his cabinet selections, announced each with a rather sober survey of the problems in the areas with which they'll be responsible, had his little vacation and is now in D.C. picking up the threads of his inauguration and preparing to take office. As we begin our new year it seems like a proper time to assess the outlook for the year. Just in case you haven't noticed we've taken a bit of hiatus ourselves - partly out of laziness and distraction of course (thank you very much), but largely to avoid confronting the new year until we had to. Now that we're (barely) thru the holidays it's time to face the future....and what a future it will be be. The cartoon captures it perfectly IOHO. It will indeed be a wild ride. There is literally no single are of policy-making from the Economy to Foreign Policy to Domestic issues where we're not facing significant challenges, however. Some/much of which we've assessed before (First Things: Financial Crisis, Economy and Barry) this, the state of the economy and necessary policy strategies therein in particular. We've also had a long-running set of benchmarks on policies and strategies as well. In fact just as a reminder a chronological survey of what we think were some of our more important prior posts starts the readings collection.

Policy Directions

Just as a reminder we offer up the accompanying graphic of key policy areas. For which there are several pieces of good news. First, in each area Barry has picked as eminently well-qualified a team as we've seen in many decades, with each apparantly selected with more focus on competence, smarts and practical capacity to get things done. Second, judging by both the picks and the accompany news conferences, this is both a non-ideological team and a non-ideological set of directions and strategies. Let's be real clear about that....taking the news conferences at face value as we initially have to do, and as we're inclined to do because there was no sugar coating or pretend, the marching orders are as non-ideological as anything that's been put in place in at least four administrations. If not more ! Beyond that if you look at our structured inventory of the policy issues and review the prior posts the marching orders are, aside from some details and quibbles, exactly what we think they ought to be: pragmatic, centrist, workable, and balanced between immediate and long-term. Neither Clinton nor Bush II arrived at this sort of team and this sort of hard-nosedness until the last couple of years of their last terms. In fact if you'll look back to Clinton's first year in office he blundered as badly as possible with his gays in the military and socialized healthcare initiatives and set the table for the '92 conservative triumphs and poisoned the rest of his time in office. Third, since we're so far down the rampup phase, is what happens now ? Unfortunately that's a question of change management and political and policy skill. The good news is that we can raise that issue now instead of two years from now. The bad news is, and for the record, that Bush II tabled some radical and innovative, forward-thinking proposals in each of these areas himself and failed to deliver thru execution failure and lack of legislative skill in almost everyone.

Change Management

In our civics classes we're often taught that intent results in correct policy. As we learn, even if we don't wheel and deal at these exalted levels but just deal with local office or workgroup politics, you have to figure out how to build the right kinds of support to get change in place. Take a careful look at the accompany graphic, which is rather complex but compounds several key policy implementation issues into one conceptual ideograph (click to enlarge please !). Start with the famous (or infamous) quote from Machiavelli - a man who knew whereof he talked. Change is hard....hard...hard. First off you have to balance analysis with execution and understand the gap between where you want or need to be with where you're at and translate that gap into stepwise path forward. Second, as we are now, the bigger the gap between where we need to be and are the greater the resistances to change. Resistance escalates exponentially with the size of the gap. Finally, for each major policy area of concern, you need to understand the Four P's of power and change: the Players, their Positions and Interests and their ability to influence the outcome. Then you need to build the right kind of support to put the proper set of resources in place to get to where you want to go. Change is NOT intent - it is programatic execution well done.

 Where's Gandalf ?

It's probably fair to say that most of us are rather like the Hobbitts. Hardworking in our own patches of the world but perfectly satisfied to let the rest of it run along as it may without spending to much time or effort defending the borders. Unfortunately if somebody doesn't pay attention to the bigger issues sooner or later Mordor triumphs and the Orcs burn down the village. That requires folks of broader awareness but all too often you get ineffectual dreamers (James Earl Carter, hereafter "Peanut" comes to mind). Or you get folks who understand and work in the big picture but to their own advantage. A little predatory behavior is problem a good thing as it keeps things stirred up and keeps the socionomic ecology turning over. But too much predation where the predators get out of control and sacrifice the entirety of the public good to their own narrow interests is a really....really bad thing. As we should have learned with Enron and Worldcom but have had to be re-schooled by the horrendous financial market collapses. What we need is hard-headed statesmen who can both think and do but also act in the broader public interest. And those are scarce commodities indeed. But it is the pool from which we hopefully draw, and are drawing, our leadership and from which all the great figures of history come. So here are the two final questions/issues/challenges:

1) Have we learned our lessons and are we willing to support the necessary and painful changes needed to confront our multiple crisis ? Because no warehouse of potentially great men can lead us where we're not willing to go.

2) And do we have the right kinds of folks with the right policies beginning to be put in place ?

On the second the signs are encouraging. On the first....well that's up to you and the rest of us. Isn't it.

Key Prior Posts on Policy vs Politics

• Finding the RadCenter: Making Politics Work ?
• Framing the Radical Center: a Policy Agenda for the 4th Republic
• Policy Challenges: From Coasting Along to Coping ?
• Hidden Issues and Government Reform: the Politics of Special Interests
• Crossing the Cusp Points: Politics, Policy and a Proposal
• Party on Grasshopper: Digging Deeper....into the Policy Agendi
• Inside the Sausage Factory: the 4P's of Political Reality
• 911 Memorial: Fix the Problem Don't Repeat the Crash 

Policy and Politics: Setting the Stages

Why Washington Doesn't get Things Done Feb 6, 2008. Secretary Chertoff on major canonical barriers to successful policy implementation, built around discussions of Homeland Security examples. You really need to listen to this if you want to understand the institutional challenges to a successful change agenda.

'Stimulus' Doesn't Have to Mean Pork  If Mr. Obama is to make good on his promise to stimulate the nation's economy by firing up the nation's steamrollers, cement trucks and the like, the challenge is to find a way to make run-of-the-mill projects cost effective while also cutting the cost and time of travel. In other words , he needs to wring wasteful spending not just out of pork projects, but out of all of his transportation spending as well. Critically, his administration needs to face the problem that those who use roads, bridges and airports do not pay for the full cost of maintenance, nor do they pay for the cost they impose on other travelers by contributing to congestion. Those who use public buses and trains have long been heavily subsidized to encourage ridership. One of the biggest killers of all is that states insist on allocating federal transportation funds through a politically devised formula. The result? Smooth, well-paved rural highways and worn-out urban roadways that are paved with a layer of asphalt too thin to withstand heavy use and are therefore in need of excessive, costly maintenance. But don't blame the states for all the inefficient use of highway dollars. Federal regulations have also inflated the cost of providing roads, trains and so much more for a public on the move. All of this wouldn't be so bad if even inflated costs brought back large returns. In co-authored peer-reviewed research, I've published two papers on this subject in recent years in the Journal of Urban Economics. What I found was that over the past decade we have reaped a mere 1% return on our highway investments. And what's more, for every $1 the government has spent trying to reduce roadway congestion, motorists have saved a mere three cents in travel time and other costs. The wish lists that special interest groups are lobbying Congress to stuff into Mr. Obama's stimulus package do nothing to move us away from the over-priced, low social-benefit projects of the past. Instead of funding every special-interest pet project, the incoming administration would be better served by taking a two-step approach. First, work with Congress to address things that can reduce costs in the short run. Reforming Davis-Bacon, for example, would be a good start. Second, formulate a carefully considered set of infrastructure investments that are likely to generate the largest benefits to the traveling public, while boosting employment. In my view, such investments are likely to include building additional runways at congested airports and expanding highways in the most congested metropolitan areas where land is available to do so.

Not Right or Left, but Forward  You've got to give Barack Obama credit: The man knows how to read. Read the results of an election, and the mood of a country, that is. The team the president-elect is assembling around him is strikingly centrist in nature, a group of people known more for competence than for ideology. That seems to reflect what the nation ordered up this year. The campaign that brought Mr. Obama to power wasn't one that was dominated by policy positions or ideological debates, though both surely were present. Instead, it focused more on governing ability -- that is, who could best pull Washington out of the partisan ruts and ideological gridlock that seem to so frustrate voters. As that suggests, the mood in the country wasn't -- and isn't -- highly ideological. Indeed, the "change" impulse that Mr. Obama tapped into so effectively was rooted at least as much in a desire for forward movement in Washington as a call for movement in a particular direction. After all, Mr. Obama identified himself explicitly as a post-partisan figure rather than as a highly partisan one. Thus, one way to read the election is that it didn't give the president-elect so much a mandate to enact a liberal agenda as one to improve the way any agenda at all is put into effect in Washington. That was true before the fall meltdown in financial markets and probably was more true afterward. It seemed an election calling forth practicality and competence; certainly Mr. Obama's appointments by and large suggest that's how he read it. In fact, in an interview conducted a year before the election, David Plouffe, the man who managed the Obama campaign, already saw the mood of the country shaping up this way."I think it's a Herculean task to change this town," Mr. Plouffe said of Washington. "I do think presidential leadership may be the only answer....Before you tackle a lot of issues you have to demonstrate that you will change the way this place operates." That makes the historic election of 2008 different from that other seminal "change" election of recent times, Ronald Reagan's in 1980. That election was explicitly about changing ideology; this one was more about improving effectiveness. Which brings us to the group of people Mr. Obama has assembled for the government's most important jobs. The adjectives most often attached are experienced and moderate; the team's roots run to the center of the political spectrum rather than to the left.

• ELECTION 2008: The Campaign, the Transition, and the Obama Administration Nov 10, 2008
• WAR STORIES: Inside Campaign 2008, Obama's Inner Circle

Obama's true colors: Black, white ... or neither? A perplexing new chapter is unfolding in Barack Obama's racial saga: Many people insist that "the first black president" is actually not black. Debate over whether to call this son of a white Kansan and a black Kenyan biracial, African-American, mixed-race, half-and-half, multiracial — or, in Obama's own words, a "mutt" — has reached a crescendo since Obama's election shattered assumptions about race. Obama has said, "I identify as African-American — that's how I'm treated and that's how I'm viewed. I'm proud of it." In other words, the world gave Obama no choice but to be black, and he was happy to oblige. But the world has changed since the young Obama found his place in it. Intermarriage and the decline of racism are dissolving ancient definitions. The candidate Obama, in achieving what many thought impossible, was treated differently from previous black generations. And many white and mixed-race people now view President-elect Obama as something other than black. So what now for racial categories born of a time when those from far-off lands were property rather than people, or enemy instead of family? "They're falling apart," said Marty Favor, a Dartmouth professor of African and African-American studies and author of the book "Authentic Blackness." "In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois said the question of the 20th century is the question of the color line, which is a simplistic black-white thing," said Favor, who is biracial. "This is the moment in the 21st century when we're stepping across that." Rebecca Walker, a 38-year-old writer with light brown skin who is of Russian, African, Irish, Scottish and Native American descent, said she used to identify herself as "human," which upset people of all backgrounds. So she went back to multiracial or biracial, "but only because there has yet to be a way of breaking through the need to racially identify and be identified by the culture at large." "Of course Obama is black. And he's not black, too," Walker said. "He's white, and he's not white, too. Obama is whatever people project onto him ... he's a lot of things, and neither of them necessarily exclude the other."

Closet Centrist It is a lineup generous in its moderation, astonishing for its continuity, startling for its stability. A defense secretary, Robert Gates, who once headed the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M. A secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who supported the invasion of Iraq, voted to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization and called direct, unconditional talks with Iran "irresponsible and frankly naive." A national security adviser, retired Gen. James Jones, most recently employed at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who served as a special adviser to the Bush administration on the Middle East. A Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, who is one of Henry Paulson's closest allies outside the administration. A head of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, whose writings and research seem to favor low tax rates, stable money and free trade. It is tempting for conservatives to crow -- or liberals to lament -- that Barack Obama's victory has somehow produced John McCain's administration. But this partisan reaction trivializes some developments that, while early and tentative, are significant. Second, Obama's appointments reveal something important about current Bush policies. Though Obama's campaign savaged the administration as incompetent and radical, Obama's personnel decisions have effectively ratified Bush's defense and economic approaches during the past few years. At the Pentagon, Obama rehired the architects of President Bush's current military strategy -- Gates, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Raymond Odierno. At the Treasury Department, Obama has hired one of the main architects of Bush's current economic approach. This continuity does not make Obama an ideological traitor. It indicates that Bush has been pursuing centrist, bipartisan policies -- without getting much bipartisan support. The transition between Bush and Obama is smoother than some expected, not merely because Obama has moderate instincts but because Bush does as well. Particularly on the economy, Bush has never been a libertarian; he has always matched a commitment to free markets with a willingness to intervene when markets stumble. The candidate of "change" is discovering what many presidents before him have found: On numerous issues, the range of responsible policy options is narrow. And the closer you come to the Oval Office, the wiser your predecessors appear.

THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW: Bush on His Record As he sits at his mile-high desk, clad in his Air Force One crew jacket, George W. Bush is as he has ever been: upbeat, focused, confident in his past decisions and in the future. This is remarkable given the up and downs -- lately downs -- of his administration. Through it all, the president has acted on his own convictions, a trait that has inspired both violent critics and passionate defenders. In a more than hour-long interview, Mr. Bush tells me about his tenure. He ticks off his personal list of domestic achievements: No Child Left Behind, which he says was not only an "education reform" but a "civil rights measure"; a costly Medicare prescription-drug program, which also created health-savings accounts and put "people in charge of their own health-care decisions"; his faith-based initiative, which he says was not about making the state a "religious recruiter" but about creating a government mentality that says "if it works, fund it"; his tax cut, which he credits in part for "52 months of uninterrupted job growth." He also is proud of "fighting off protectionism and promoting trade," and his success at getting Trade Promotion Authority back in 2002. Mr. Bush had many big plans that never came to fruition, from school vouchers to radical health-care reform. He considers Social Security and immigration the "two big issues that were unfinished." His immigration plan infuriated his base, which viewed it as amnesty. He remains unrepentant. "Immigration was a very tough issue, and I knew it would be tough because it's a very emotional issue . . . On the other hand, the system was broken, falling apart, and people's lives were being affected in a way that was really not worthy of our country." He also won't agree that Social Security reform was a casualty of the Iraq war. "Social Security did not pass because legislative bodies tend to be risk-averse, and restructuring, reforming Social Security requires a certain amount of risk. And the idea of asking members of Congress to deal with a problem that is not imminent is difficult." He contents himself with having "laid out some solutions" and hoping a future president will take courage from the fact he campaigned on it twice, "proving it was not the third or fourth or fifth rail of American politics." Bush Is a Book Lover

Biden to shrink VP role - big time Joe Biden is laying plans to significantly shrink the role of the vice presidency in Barack Obama’s White House, according to an official familiar with his thinking. It’s not just that Biden won’t sit in on Senate Democrats’ weekly caucus meetings – a privilege Republicans afforded outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney. He won’t have an office outside the House floor, as House Speaker Dennis Hastert gave Cheney early on. Biden will not begin every day with his own intelligence briefing before sitting in on the president’s. He will not always be the last person Obama speaks to before making a decision. He also will not, as a transition official calls it, operate a “shadow government” within an Obama administration. One of the few ways he will resemble Cheney is in making clear his future ambitions, or lack thereof: Biden doesn’t expect to run for president after leaving the vice-presidency, according to a transition source who was not authorized to speak on the record. “What he has said previously is that Vice President Cheney had an overly expansive view of the vice president, almost created like a shadow government inside the White House," said the transition official familiar with Biden's role. "Vice President-elect Biden has a very strong view that the vice president’s role is to be an advisor to the president and to be a member of the president’s team, and that’s how he’s going to be in the job.” Cheney made clear he had no intention of succeeding President George W. Bush, which along with his expanded role contributed to his almost unparalleled freedom to act – pushing controversial positions on torture, energy policy and Iraq, knowing he’d be spared facing voters to explain his actions. But Cheney also had Bush, who gave his more seasoned No. 2 broad sway – with a particular emphasis on foreign policy, where Cheney already had a well-established portfolio as a former defense secretary during the Gulf War. Obama has shown no inclination to do the same for Biden.

Cars, Kabul and Banks If there is anything I’ve learned as a reporter, it’s that when you get away from “the thing itself” — the core truth about a situation — you get into trouble. Barack Obama will have to make three mammoth decisions after he takes the oath of office — on cars, Kabul and banks — and we have to hope that he bases those decisions on the things themselves, the core truths about each. Because many people will be trying to throw fairy dust in his eyes. The first issue will be whether to bail out Detroit. What is the core truth about Detroit? Auto executives will tell you that it’s the credit crisis, health care, retirement costs and unions. Sure, those are real. But the core truth is that for way too long Detroit made too many cars that too many people did not want to buy. After Detroit, Mr. Obama will be asked to bail out Afghanistan. Watch out. The tide has turned against us there because too many Afghans don’t want to buy our politics, or, more precisely, the politics of our ally, the corrupt government of President Hamid Karzai. That is “the thing itself.”  But maybe the most flagrant area where we continue to avoid looking at “the thing itself” is with our banks. What we are dealing with there is the effect of a credit bubble that began in the late-1980s with the advent of global securitization — the chopping up and bundling into bonds of everything from home mortgages to student loans to airplane leases, and then selling them around the world. When you take this much leverage and this much globalization and this much complexity and start it in America, and then blow it up, you have a nuclear financial explosion. The deflating of this credit bubble is so wealth-destroying that even the most prudent banks have been ravaged by it. What to do? The smartest people I know in banking are praying that Obama’s Treasury Department will tackle “the thing itself.” That is, do a real analysis of what the major banks are worth in a worst-case scenario. Then determine, if, on that basis, they have viable, survivable equity-to-asset ratios.

Rectitude Chic Is this the last Christmas of the old era, or the first Christmas of the new? Will people spend in a way that responds to what's around them (Nothing seems changed!) or to what they know is coming (Did you see this week's jobless numbers? Highest in 26 years!)? Will they go for some last big-ticket items, sliding the platinum card along the counter with a "We who are about to die salute you" flair, or will spending reflect a new prudence, and the new anxiety? Assume the latter. There's a new mood taking hold. For a generation we've been tapping on plastic keyboards, entering data into databases, inventing financial instruments that are abstract, complex and unconnected to any seeable reality. Fortunes were made in the ether, almost no one knows how; there's a sense that this was perhaps part of the problem. Workers tapped on keyboards and produced work they cannot see, touch or necessarily admire. They'd like to make their country better, and stronger, in a way they can see. And people want to belong to something. If you're a vibrant member of a church in America, or a casual member of a vibrant church, you're part of something. If you're a member of a family that's together, you are part of something. A lot of Americans do not have these two things. You can add to his reservations the inevitability of graft and boondoggles, the potential for corruption surrounding local efforts run by state houses led by people like Rod Blagojevich, and heady new power in the hands of those who used to be called, and are about to be called again, union chieftains. It will be a mess, a scandal a day, and Americans, ever sophisticated about such things, know it. They will support it anyway, for the reasons above. There's something else going on, a new or renewed sense of national shame. Or communal responsibility. Or a sense of reckoning. Whatever it is it's a reaction to the excesses of the O's, a reaction against the ways of those who caused the mess on Wall Street and Main Street. It is a reassertion that there actually are rules, and that it is embarrassing to break them in a way so colorfully damaging and destructive to everyone else.

• Peggy Noonan: Turbulence Ahead , Corporate Leadership and the Crisis

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