Happy New Year! The Fourth Year of this Blog

++ To get up to date on Iowa, J.Ann Selzer--the Des Moines Register's version of Nate Silver--finished her Caucus poll, which showed it Willard at 24, Paul at 21 and Santorum at 16. But Ms. Selzer gives a heads up as her last two days of polling showed Forthy Mix had the momentum. Ms. Selzer won her fame by calling Barack Obama's last minute burst to win the 2008 Iowa Caucus. She says that Santorum has moved into second place and is neck and neck with Romney. Democratic observers recalled when John Kerry came from nowhere to beat Howard Dean in 2004. The last two days are critical for the Caucus.

++Rick Santorum has been playing a strange game in Iowa. Yesterday, he vowed he would bomb Iran--that's the new GOP mantra--and then he went on about how we shouldn't celebrate diversity because diversity brings conflict.

++Last night I wanted to scream when I read that Mitt Romney would veto any federal DREAM ACT. That's the bill which gave young illegals who served in our military or went on to college a fast track toward legalization. Buried in Romney's remarks were the phrase that college education was a privilege--not an investment as some of us think. The remark opened the door once again to the highly privileged world of Mitt Romney. It also showed that he has been consistent on only one issue the whole primary--deporting illegal immigrants.

++As the New Year came in last night, I realized that my frustration with our present system and those wanting to lead the country is the amazing lack of political imagination, the total inability to envision a political future for this country, which citizens can adopt and embrace. I've written constantly about the retrograde views of the GOP and this desire to return to the Golden Age of America, which coincides with the Golden Age of Television. Within the Republican base, there is a tangible longing for that imaginary America. Forget the repressive atmosphere that existed then or the gross inequalities that plagued the country at that time, the myth of that past is alluring to a vast number of Americans. There is no rationalizing it or dismissing it. The stunning comeback of the Right over the last two years, which Thomas Frank writes about,is based on this fake nostalgia, strangely a nostalgia for a time when the top marginal tax rate was 90%, the union movement was strong, and that the government was actually larger per capita than now. But none of these elements are acknowledged and people actually believe that the 1950s and early 1960s were more libertarian than now, more religious than now, and more nationalist than now. This is pure political escapism and the GOP presidential contenders are adroitly playing on this. But there is real and present danger to our society if this attitude is adopted and someone actually governs with this in mind.

++The United States has to get a grip on its own reality again before it can plausibly argue that it can lead the world. We have not been an homogeneous country--ever. The reason Finland has a higher standard of education than the United States is not because it is ethnically monolithic but because it has a more equal distribution of wealth and also opportunities. We are not broke as Republicans like to say. Basically, the United States' GDP has again reached its pre-Recession high and is still the richest country in the world. But the average per capital income of our citizens is now below Canada. The United States must now compete in the world of global economics. That doesn't mean we are inevitably decline. It's just we can't dictate to the world the terms of that competition. It means that the United States has to make some fundamental decisions about what type of society it wants to become--not what it was.

++Here I need to hear a Futuroma Type Speech from President Obama, who actually understands these things, or from a Republican. We need the Vision Thing as George H.W. Bush used to call it. I am concerned that the President will just spend 2012 rallying against Congress, which now has the awesome approval rating of 5%. Just extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance is not the platform to get the Mojo back into the system. The President has to swing for the fences and outline how American is going to move to the next phase of our future. This means talking about the next transition from our dirty energy independence (sometime in the next four years) to more alternative energy, from a manufacturing recovery to the next phase in our manufacturing, and from our low point in education to a point of excellence in all fields. And, no, the market will not get us there unfettered by regulation and government controls.

++Both parties view this next election as a cross-roads for America, a do-or-die moment for the future of the country. The only way one party will triumph is if it can articulate a future and a future built through practical programs which Americans can buy into. It's not enough for the Democrats to run against the Republicans as representing the rich, although in this election year this has become abundantly clear. Nor can Democrats just run on protecting the social safety net, which they are justifiably proud of their role in creating. Nor can they simply point to Obama's first two and half years of extraordinary achievements, it still gets down to what have you done for me lately. The campaign has to be waged against the fictional history being perpetrated by the Right about how America actually became prosperous and relatively freer than other countries. The temptation will be for both parties to retreat to argue over what things the both sides are prepared to preserve. That is not a vision of the future.

++President Obama is running in a Catch 22 situation. The previous administration was responsible for the total collapse of our economic system but the effects weren't felt until Obama took office. That is why Romney and the Republicans campaign without any feelings of guilt against Obama as if he worsened the situation. I do know of people who Joe Biden criticizes who suffer from selective amnesia about this. But even still the return to pre-2007 America is not a worthy vision in itself. America had lost its manufacturing base, it had existed on bubbles in various fields, and it had an economy based on FIRE--Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. It had to collapse but what do we replace it with? Here President Obama has to articulate his vision of the economic future of the country. Otherwise, the political debate will devolve into a debate on preserving the old economy, which could never get us to the future. It was a recipe for rapid decline.

++Last night since my wife and son were visiting friends and relatives, I watched a presentation about our national security by two Pentagon officials, who had spent two years developing a new model for American security. The good news is that our military has extraordinary brainpower;the bad news is that brainpower is dealing with issues that our politicians have not even begun to assimilate. The presentation revolved around using the Hiesenberg Uncertainty principle to develop a framework for dealing with the future. For the two presenters, the two key components were prosperity and security. But security they argued had to be consistent with our own self-understanding of our principles and core values. They argued that a national security doctrine can not be developed just to ward off every imaginable threat but it had to be sustainable and exhibit a national resilience. Their view was that we are about to begin a new phase in human civilization, a phase that is being foreshadowed by the developments in information technology. America can lead that future but it must start to understand it. They argued that we have not recovered from the containment theories of the Cold War but have just adopted new versions of it without rethinking its basic premises for today's world. They warned that if we do not begin to think anew we will be hunkered down in a lose-lose situation where we are focused on only protecting the past from threats from the future. We will not be able to get out of our social and political bind.

One of the interesting side remarks of these two was that because you pay or have money doesn't make you a citizen. It makes you a renter. You have no ownership in your society and country. You have to get involved and you have to be willing to pay the price for change. Otherwise, we will not move forward. Nice sentiment.

++I've always maintained that President Obama would only be able to stabilize and save the old economy, while putting down some of the green shoots for the future economy. What he needs to do is recap some of his stated goals on manufacturing,etc. and bring the country up to date on these things. Ignored by our media has been the slight recovery of our manufacturing base and the goal that Obama would double exports by 2014. Likewise, the fiasco over Solyandra has clouded the fact that the solar industry has doubled its capacity over the last two years. Instead, we get the litany of stories about Chinese progress in science and technology, without the negatives about their economy and political science. I remember when East Germany was touted as the most thriving economy in the world, something it never was or was even close to. But the country needs to hear about progress in these areas.

++We also need this year to hear Obama's vision for his foreign policy. We have heard the foreign policy of the Republicans--Bomb Iran and do anything Israel wants. The rest of planet Earth has been missing. David Ignatius wrote a piece about the need for Obama to articulate this vision because it was not good enough to say you are better than George W. Bush. In fact, the President has a very good record on foreign policy. But he must locate the United States and integrate how our going forward links with the broader vision of the United States in the world. This has been done rather off camera by the Obama Administration. You only get inklings of the change in foreign policy from critics on the Left. They rightfully note that Obama is moving the center of gravity for foreign policy toward Asia, citing the free trade agreements, the visit by Secretary of State Clinton to Burma, the creation of a military presence in Australia. But they argue this is all a product of a strategy of containment against China and some strange politics of oil. If President Obama can articulate moving the center of gravity of foreign policy to the most active areas of the global economy, I believe people will be relieved not to hear about the Middle East.

++The Obama administration should not get trapped into a situation where the President's sole accomplishments are cleaning up the tremendous mess left behind by the last President. This leads nowhere and only allows future Presidents to return to that sorry place.

++And lastly, Happy New Year to all those people around the world who fought, sacrificed and died struggling for freedom.