Looking for more joy as the New Year begins

I am generally an upbeat guy who sees a lot to be hopeful about.  For example, I'm pleased about Google's newest advancement in search technology  and I'm looking forward to Keith Richard's memoir.  But, I must say that this is not a particularly hopeful season.

Matt Bai's searing analysis in today's Times makes it pretty clear that the Obama administration squandered a chance to really put the country on a better track after the complete disaster of the Bush administration.  I am starting to think that Obama may be a one term president.  I like him and I like a lot of his policies, but– by turning the stimulus package and much of the health care planning process to the Congress and especially the House–he allowed fiscal policy to fall into the hands of a crowd who festooned the bills with a lot of things for special interests and not nearly as much for nation as a whole as was needed.  As a result, both bills were both too big and too small.  Unless Obama is able to reframe the situation in the next 55 days, he and the Democratic Party are going to get their collective butts kicked by an outraged public.

That leads me to the next problem: the Republican Party is bankrupt both conceptually and morally, plus it's embracing sheer lunacy.  As has been stated many times, insanity is doing the same thing that didn't work before thinking that things are going to turn out better this time.  The Republican economic policy of cutting domestic expenditures and promoting the interests of the country's richest people is the same lousy trickle down approach they've been pushing since Reagan,  which keeps putting the country in deeper and deeper trouble.  The notion that we'd cut government spending, when corporate America (let alone private individuals) has shown an unwillingness to put its $1.6T in cash and near cash into investment at a time when that is sorely needed and banks are tightening the screws on credit to the extent that I can't get a $3,000 bump in my credit limit on an Amex card...Well, it seems absolutely boneheaded to me.  And, as if their economic approach weren't enough of an indictment of the Republicans, the fact that they are putting forward haters who are completely unprepared for executive positions (including a governor of a very rural state who quit her job after two years in order to make money as a gadfly commentator for Fox News) makes it clear that they are in no position to take over the power that seems likely to fall into their hands in November.  If you didn't like Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, wait till you see the job that chain-smoking John Boener does. 

Meanwhile, the international context is extremely troubling to me.  An authoritarian China is definitely on the march, using state capitalism to make investments that the United States could have been making for the last sixty years, since we invented all the stuff that the Chinese are now using to green their economy.  The Chinese are taking over a space our economy should own in part because they are flagrantly disregarding a variety of international agreements they've signed and in part because the US has been too flabby to move in concert with the Europeans in a greener direction and in part because the Europeans don't have the power to sway the Americans electorate away from the short term thinking that is getting us into so much trouble. 

And, as if we needed more bad news, the Islamists have us pinned down. 

From the New York Times: An American soldier protects Afghans eating at the end of the daily Ramadan fast (Photo by Adam Ferguson)

The fanatics among the Muslims have created such a stir in their sectarian-oriented societies that we've got to be deployed all over that part of the world to keep bin Laden in his hole.  Maybe these folks will form functional, democratically-styled governments after lunch is over?  Probably not. 

So,  I'm not feeling nearly as happy as this New Year unfolds as I would like.  The end of the world isn't necessarily near but the near term future doesn't look that great from my vantage point. 

I welcome your reactions. I'd love to have another way of seeing things.