A small piece of rotten wood falls from house siding, suggesting the termites that are consuming the structure. A popular ruler decides not to go out to war with his troops and King David’s reign is never the same again.
Noah’s neighbors should have worried more when the old patriarch started building the ark. The first nail to go into the gopher wood had the ring of doom to it.
When big problems are coming, they are sometimes first seen in small things. Lately, I have notice more neighbors, Democrats and Republicans, building arks. They are still cutting spending, planting gardens, and mowing their own grass . . . a sight that used to be rare even in very middle-class La Mirada. The sound of the hand pushed mowers sounds like ark building to me.
Half of us believe the country is on the right track, an improvement from Bush days, but the optimists are not acting as they poll. They are behaving like the rains are coming and there is an ark to be built. People want to believe in the still so new administration, but the ache in their bones warns that the weather ahead is going to be rough.
Why are arks being built in neighborhoods all over America? People sense, Democrats and Republicans, that there is a deeper problem than the elites of either party are acknowledging. They are reading between the lines and sense what they cannot articulate. They are still hopeful, but they are starting to hedge their bets.
They have no confidence in the Democrats outside of Obama. If he is seen to fail, then both parties will have been recently repudiated. I have no idea what will happen next, but if this happens almost anybody might become President. (This does not include John Edwards.)
Except for Edwards being finished on the national scene, this is bad news and nobody should rejoice in it.
No patriot wants to see his nation suffer and few wish to see their President fail. Americans still are mostly proud of their intelligent new President and rightly enamored with the family values on display in the photogenic first family.
The President did not win with my vote, but Obama is now the leader of my country. While part of the loyal opposition, we are still patriots. The nation does not need another failed presidency. It would be the third damaged administration in a row.
In his last one hundred days, President Obama has made it impossible for me to vote for him in four years. His abortion decisions alone would rule this out. Still losing our votes would not stress any Democratic operative since the Reynolds’ family have been Republicans since seceding from Virginia to fight for Mr. Lincoln.
It is easy to forget that in the best cycle for Democrats since 1976, President Obama won by about seven percent of the vote. The Democrats control everything now and soon will not be able to blame Bush for our problems.
Serious new problems are on the horizon. The Prejean incident, absurd in itself, was an indelible image of the perils of giving up. Conceding marriage will not be enough, conservatives will have to be glad for their own defeat or face social ostracism. Traditionalists will not be left alone.
The recent news that a majority of Americans are now “pro-life” has taken the sting out of the argument that the votes of this generation of young adults means that historic views on marriage are doomed. There is always a next generation and the abortion debate proves that the next generation may not agree with this one.
A coming Supreme Court appointment must be handled well by the President, a liberal with socially conservative views would be politically wise by the Democrats in Congress will never allow it. If he picks from the fringes of the doctrinaire liberal academy, the culture wars will become even more intense.
It is the economy that broke McCain and the GOP, but the recession that started on their watch continues. Has President Obama helped or made the situation worse?
I oppose the President’s plan whatever the short-term outcome because it reduces our liberty. With many Americans, I would rather be free than made secure by the state. However, the “middle” of America will not judge Obama on such terms, but on the basic economic results.
If they feel better off, Obama will be given a second term and the Obama generation will be cemented into place for most of the rest of my political life.
Nobody knows the truth about the economy and there is fear mixed into the hope. The longer the recession lasts, and the more the mainstream and the administration trumpet prosperity around the corner, the less they will be believed. They are trusted by a majority still, but there is cloud on the horizon that looks like rain.
The fear is that the very experts and insider who helped create this economic mess are now trying to solve it. Their solutions so far are gifts of graft and privilege for themselves, plutocrats and politicians whose only patriotism is to the kingdom of self.
The Congress stinks with corruption and lies. Perhaps things will be better soon, but it is hard to see how.
George W. Bush did not compile a good record of fiscal prudence. That is one reason that the Republicans lost the economy and Congress, but President Obama has made the Bush administration look frugal. A debt driven recession bids to become a debt driven depression if President Obama does not thread the needle. Most Americans hope he can, but if he does not, then there will be electoral hell to pay.
Americans do not like his proposed solutions, they still fear debt and government spending, so they had better work in the next two years. Like Reagan, Americans believe more in Obama than his ideas and so Obama’s ideas better be as successful as Reagan’s.
When MSNBC runs a story about deflation, it is time to worry. Deflation would be a nightmare in a nation saddled with debt. We owe and we would have to repay in more valuable money. Falling prices would lead to cut backs in industry and cash would be king.
When potatoes were cheaper and tomatoes were cheaper, jobs were dear.
For those of us noted trained in economics five questions worry us and cause us to invest in a little gopher wood of our own. Will massive government spending, normally inflationary, be enough to ward off deflation? Will the government go too far in fighting deflation and bring on ruinous inflation? Who will hire the vast majority of the American population without the college credentials “needed” for many jobs? How will the general public react if there is a sustained fall in the standard of living? What is something goes wrong abroad and we have to spend more money there?
Here we turn to the rumblings abroad.
The peace dividend of the victory of the Allies in the Cold War is spent. The world is more dangerous today than at any point since 1989. Pakistan has weapons of mass destruction, the bomb, and large swathes of that nation are controlled by Taliban-like parties. India, the largest democracy in the world, cannot afford to let the bomb fall into militant and hostile hands. China is building a great navy, but faces the deep social instability of any dictatorship. Israel cannot let Iran gain the bomb.
The US is not projecting strength in the world and the Pax Americana is fraying at the edges. The rise of piracy is just one evidence of this fact. Terrorists, land pirates, have not stopped trying to harm us and they show no evidence of fearing us anymore.
We are on the defensive globally. Obama flails about rebuking the Bush administration policies, but then moving back to weak versions of them when it becomes obvious there are not alternatives. The result is that the Obama foreign policy and conduct of the War are imitations and shadows of Bush’s with apologies, pauses, and hesitations.
All is not by any means lost!
Fortunately, government is not all, or most, of American life. The United States is still politically free and economically potent. We still have unmatchable economic might and social stability. We have been through worse periods and will come out of this one.
But the Obama administration, in which so many Americans have placed so much hope, is faltering. Perhaps it will right itself, most Americans wish it would, but are starting to stock up and looking over at Mr. Noah and wondering if they too should start building an ark of safety.
