I don\u2019t mean to be depressing, but so far 2008 hasn\u2019t been a good year. The economy is tanking because of a perfect-storm of soaring oil prices, spiking food costs, and a financial crisis set off by years of incautious lending and borrowing. Unfortunately, our nation didn\u2019t have the foresight to heed the warnings that cheap oil, cheap food and cheap credit wouldn\u2019t go on forever. So now we\u2019re in a business recession, and we\u2019re praying that\u2019s all it will be. As to working on long-term fixes, such as energy conservation research, renewed alternative energy development, rationalizing our agricultural regulation and subsidy policies, throttling back the one alternative energy program that did catch fire but is terribly inefficient (i.e., corn ethanol), regulating the crazy world of investment banking and increasing consumer protection in the mortgage markets \u2013 well, don\u2019t hold your breath. <\/p>\n
You would think that as our nation prepares to select a new president, such issues would be at the forefront of discussion. But the nation has had bad luck on the political front (as though the economic and financial problems weren\u2019t bad enough). The Democratic Party got caught between Scylla and Charybdis, and its boat is sinking. The onslaught by Barack Obama caught everyone by surprise, but the \u201cyes we can\u201d movement disregarded Machiavelli\u2019s advice: it went after its enemy (Hilary Clinton) without having the power to kill. Just as Machiavelli said, if you can\u2019t take out your enemy clean, then you\u2019re going to be severely weakened by his or her revenge. Obama and Clinton seem to be playing out a Greek tragedy, unknowingly advancing their own mutual doom; here\u2019s an article<\/a> about this by classicist historian Victor Davis. The GOP will most likely pick up the pieces in November, which basically means a continuation of national inaction and misdirection from the previous Bush administration. <\/p>\n I\u2019m very disappointed about this because I think it\u2019s time for big changes, on the level of FDR\u2019s New Deal and the Kennedy\/Johnson Great Society (notice that it\u2019s Democrats who carry out big national changes, and Republicans like Reagan who take them apart). America has to do something big about health care, about global warming, about financial market stability, about the Mexican border (albeit, McCain may well be the best person for that), about energy independence, about education, about scientific research, about the growing divisions between rich and poor, about Social Security, about the Middle East (a problem that would be a lot more tractable if we didn\u2019t need so much oil), etc. Yes, all this will mean somewhat higher taxes and more government involvement in the economy. But without it, things are going to get crazy, not to mention unfair. Every so many decades, America has to come together and give its system an overhaul. A McCain victory will put that off for another four years (I\u2019m being optimistic about 2012). I\u2019m sure that Mr. McCain will do a better job of maintaining the status quo than Mr. Bush did, but he will not start the big changes needed.<\/p>\n Given the terrible spectacle that has emerged from the Obama-Clinton struggle, it seems clear to me that American common-sense will decide that the Democrats aren\u2019t up to overhauling the system, so let\u2019s maintain the status quo for now. Maybe the heartland will be more open to considering a risky commitment to change in 2012 if by then the Democrats can develop a series of potential candidates who will inspire the nation\u2019s confidence in terms of their experience, their character, their intelligence and their common sense. <\/p>\n Perhaps Barack Obama did us a favor by showing that Hilary Clinton wasn\u2019t really ready to successfully guide the nation through a course of major change. Her husband was a popular President because times were good; he talked a good line, but he didn\u2019t even try to accomplish anything substantial (especially after Hilary dropped the ball with health care in 1994). In fact he often did the bidding of the conservatives, e.g. by taking apart the family welfare system instead of truly reforming it. <\/p>\n If I was Howard Dean and the other Democratic bigwigs, I would assume that 2008 is a lost cause and start work on grooming the best and brightest possibilities for 2012. The name that I have in mind is Sen. Evans Bayh from Indiana, but there are others, including Sen. Claire McCaskill, Gov. Janet Napolitano, Gov. Tim Kaine and Sen. Mary Landrieu. (This list would also include Barack Obama, if he had the good sense to abort his present campaign and let Hilary take the bullet in November.)<\/p>\n One more thing \u2013 there was an interesting article<\/a> in the NY Times about how the Titanic might not have sank so fast had the shipyard not cut corners by using cheap steel bolts. Had the better bolts been used, as with other ships, the Titanic might have held up long enough for other ships to reach it, saving a lot of lives. This couldn\u2019t help but make me think about the problem that American Airlines had recently about finally getting around to inspecting its old MD80\u2019s<\/a> for wiring defects, after the FAA finally pressed them (and after Congress and some whistleblowers pressed the FAA into doing its job). This will hopefully avert a modern airborne Titanic incident (admittedly, the domestic airlines have had a pretty good safety record for the past few years). But it does show that business without effective government oversight is a dicey proposition. The need for government involvement has not gone away, despite what Ronald Reagan and his Bush acolytes (and probably soon-to-be McCain acolyte) told us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don\u2019t mean to be depressing, but so far 2008 hasn\u2019t been a good year. The economy is tanking because of a perfect-storm of soaring oil prices, spiking food costs, and a financial crisis set off by years of incautious lending and borrowing. Unfortunately, our nation didn\u2019t have the foresight to heed the warnings that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5070,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions\/5070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}