The Magic Potion

With the marathon effort to overhaul the health care system behind us, it is time for the Obama administration to move quickly and powerfully to the monumental task of putting Americans back to work.

The Magic Potion

"This is a long-term project that demands big-time government involvement. It will require the kind of commitment — over an even longer period of time — that President Obama and the Democrats in Congress gave to their health care initiative." Therein lies the problem to the kind of solutions Bob is talking about. With the current political climate so poisonous and the public's opinion of its elected leaders so low, there's no way another "big time government involvement" is going to happen. Unless governments at all levels start hiring en masse, it's up to businesses large and small to put people to work. And it just isn't happening. The reality is that those who are fortunate to have a job are working longer hours and doing more. What's disturbing to me is that businesses may be getting used to that, so where's the incentive to add to the payroll? The other problem with Bob's proposal is "long-term". That's a oxymoron in a Washington that's fixated on the next election cycle. On the one hand we chafe at our politicians' focus on getting re-elected and holding on to power, yet how else can a true visionary drive a long-term project otherwise? Edward Kennedy championed health care reform for over forty years before we got to the historic bill just passed. Somehow, and I don't pretend to know the answer, we need some kind of hybrid policy-making body that has the power to tackle big issues independent of the short-term American political cycle. I don't advocate the Chinese system, but they are able to engage in long-range projects that bear out 5, 10 and more years in the future.

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We have such a mechanism.

We have agencies staffed and managed by professionals shielded by the civil service laws or chartered long term appointments, traditionally on the basis of merit.

Andrew Jackson is long dead. The first Johnson and the Grant administrations

are also in the distant past. The damage done by Reagan and the Bushes we need to work on. The system is there we must recognise and use it.