That's it, take the bull by the horns, size up the situation, and take corrective action. If you saw my house, you would agree, yep, something should be done. New floors, for starters. Geez, people, do something with those floors! How about fixing the flashing on the roof and replacing those ancient gutters. The heating is ridiculous in here - new furnace, anyone? And how about that second bathroom, you know, the nonfunctioning one?
Or we could spend the weekend reorganizing the top of the desk, changing the spacing between the plants and pottery in the den, switching the coffee table and the footstool so the room has a more balanced look, and some nice new accessories for the living room would be nice. Yes, that's better. At least I feel better, now that at least one room has the proper feng-shui, and by touching up the surfaces, eventually we'll work our way in to the big structural changes, right?
This is my weekly dilemma at Om Shanty: whether to attack one of several major projects, which require a major investment of time, effort, planning, and money, or to nibble around the edges, clean up last week's debris, straighten the books on the shelves, maybe move some things around, and call it a day. Kind of like arranging the deck chairs for maximum comfort and an optimum view of the rapidly sinking ship.
Mr. Obama seems to face nationally much the same dilemma I face on the home front. He could take his cue from FDR and focus the electoral mandate on an economy that is rapidly taking on water, or he could try to satisfy every other need, some more pressing than others, and meet every other desire on the political horizon where needs and desires are without end.
Pardon me, I have this penchant for framing public issues in terms of private ones, and vice versa; sometimes the shoe fits, and we've got a nice Shakespearean moment in which the gardener explains everything to Richard II in Act Two, Scene Whatever, but it’s too late for him to do anything about it but lose his horse and offer his kingdom (too late) for another one, and John of Gaunt saw it coming long ago anyway. And sometimes it doesn't.
I’m just the gardener, what do I know, except the roof leaks when the wind blow from the south, one of the bathrooms is torn apart, and two rooms need new floors. All these projects require skills and materials that I don’t have, but they are not going away. It's easier to bend into accomplishing smaller tasks that I can satisfactorily do myself with available materials – paint the garage, cut firewood, maybe even build a pergola. The king archetype doesn't fit, so I can't tell Barack what to do first and what to put on the back burner.
The argument for an aggressive approach in the mold of Franklin D. Roosevelt or Lyndon B. Johnson is that health care, energy and education are all part of systemic economic problems and should be addressed comprehensively. But Democrats are discussing a hybrid strategy that would push for a bold economic program and also encompass other elements of Mr. Obama’s campaign platform, even if larger goals are put off. (NYT, Nov. 9))
According to the Times reporter, the New Hope Great Deal Society We Can Believe In can either focus singlemindedly on economic recovery or try to satisfy a raft of campaign promises for a slew of different constituencies – not both. If he chooses the former approach, like FDR, the ship remains afloat, if in some disarray, and maybe there is time left in a second term to work on other problems, given a stabilized economy. The premise is that improvements in health care, energy policy, and education - though seriously needed - aren’t terribly helpful or even possible if half the people who elected you are losing their jobs and their homes.
The risk, of course, is that by spending all his political capital on saving banks and bankrupt corporations, we arrive in 2012 with the same crises in health care, infrastructure, environment, and education, and large numbers of people still lose their jobs and their homes, because the freely enterprising banks and corporations took care of themselves, as is their way. Maybe the deck chairs do need attention. Don't ask me, I'm just the gardener.
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