The "Done Nothing" Accusations Thrown at Obama

Obama has done nothing. Of course it has not yet been a year, but he has no accomplishments to point to except some arguments about how job loss would have been worse without his stimulus package (a package that included financial industry bailouts that began with the Bush administration).

The truth is, we don't know what Obama has accomplished. Or, rather, won't for some time. And simply judging from my own experience of life, I am actually assured by his apparent lack of progress. For now.

I've been blogging less and reading others' blogs less. The reason for this is simply that I've been diverting my writing energy into a bigger project. For now, it would seem obvious that I'm doing less. I'm not. But what I'm doing is higher risk. No one else may ever see it and it may amount to nothing.

I don't fool myself about my blog postings having any impact, but it is gratifying to hit the "publish post" button and have "done" something. I quite like that. The posts may have little or no consequence but my accomplishments seems obvious.

By contrast, the writing project I've been working on is far less likely to be published and even if it does, it is unlikely to have much more impact than my posts. I am doing something - more, even, then when I was at my peak of blogging. But there is little to report. I'm just working on the project. And will be for months - maybe a year. It doesn't sound very exciting but completing this project will be more exciting than anything I've done in the last decade or two. And it has the potential to have much more impact than the hundred-some posts I could publish in the same time. It will, in any event, be more consequential than a string of unrelated posts. For reasons like this, I believe that invisible progress is often the best progress.

So let's return to our president. He could do things to keep the 24-hour news channels happy, the equivalent of presidential blogging. Lots of little publicity opportunities, legislative initiatives and the like that generate news but probably won't change history.

Or he could take a big risk and put himself into a project like health care reform. He may not get legislation passed. Or it may be bad legislation. This is very high risk. But IF he succeeds, when history is written this will be an accomplishment as big as or bigger than that of any president in decades.

I have found that there is a negative correlation between how much I'm doing in any given week and what I can report at the end of the year. The projects that are worth talking about are few and take a long time. By contrast, if I "stay busy" I seem to inevitably wonder what it was I did later. Things that can be done quickly are generally disposable.

In a similar way, Obama's project is something that will look better at the end of his term than it does on any given news cycle. He's trying to do something big. To judge what he's done now is like a father grousing about how his son - in his second year at university - sure hasn't made as much money as the neighbor's kid who went right into landscaping. You've already given the man four years. Let him use it.

Dithering

It's no so bad to impulsively ask someone on a date but it seems insufficient as a basis for marriage. Dick Cheney has criticized Obama for "dithering" on his decision about what to do in Afghanistan. Assuming that Cheney's disdain is not proof enough that dithering is worth doing, here's something to consider.

Think about the implications of Obama's decision.

If he pulls out, we risk alienating any ally dependent on our commitment to their cause, risk destabilizing Afghanistan AND Pakistan, lose our ability to encourage the humane treatment of girls and women, lose a potential base in a region of the world that could explode into conflict, and provide the Taliban with a safe haven for plotting and launching the kind of attack that turned the date 9-11 into a tragic event.

If we stay, we continue to pump billions into a cause that has little chance of success, we lose more troops and alienate Muslims by continuing to kill both soldiers and civilians in the area, we are distracted from relationships that will do more to define our future (e.g., our relationship with Pakistan or India, for instance), pay an opportunity cost in terms of less money to spend on things like AIDs in Africa, pandemics, health care in the US, and every other single issue or problem or possibility to which the money and attention could be applied.

It is not just that the first order consequences are important and potentially counter intuitive; the second and third order consequences are worth spending time thinking through. I am going to assume that Obama is doing just that and think it is perfectly fine that he takes his time.

Time will tell, but I'd like to think that Obama is playing chess on the same checker board where Cheney was playing bumper cars.

The "Five Books You Have to Read" Store

On our recent trip, I slipped into a few bookstores. One in particular left me feeling like I could have purchased another 15 books if only I wasn't already behind in my reading by about 15 books. I love the mad diversity in a modern bookstore and - from experience - have come to believe that there are an abundance of amazing books waiting for my attention. And these wonderfully full, bursting at the seams bookstores have begun to make me weary for the very reason that they once made me so happy: they simply have too many enticing titles.

Which brings me to my idea for bookstore. Rather than have thousands and thousands of titles, just have a bookstore titled, "The 5 Books You Have to Read." And then carry only five titles. If people come in asking for a different title, you simply say, "Have you read all five of our books?" If not (and that's usually the case), just redirect them to the short list. If they have, tell them to be patient - the list changes. Eventually. "Live. Don't just read," the clerk would tell them. "There will be a new book you simply have to read soon enough. Get caught up on your chores. Visit your old aunt. Hike through a copse of trees. Volunteer. And then come back in about a month. We'll have at least one new book on the list by then."

Oh, and how do we choose the five books? Don't even get me started on that. Because as soon as you make this part explicit, you get dragged into the whole business of whose list and why not another list and what about people who need large print or children or business majors or beach reading or .... And that's just the kind of confusion that leads to bookstores that - on a single day - stock more titles than you could hope to read in a lifetime. And my bookstore would put an end to that.

Are You Among the 100 Least Influenced?

Time announced the 100 most influential people. Topping the list is Shigeru Miyamoto. Second is Rain. If, like me, you've never heard these names, you may be among the world's 100 least influenced people. (Miyamoto is Nintendo’s game designer - creator of titles like Mario Brothers. Rain is a Korean pop singer whose influence might stem from the possibility that he may some day literally provoke the collapse of karaoke-loving Kim Jong Il, who I can imagine trying to imitate Rain's snappy dance moves.)

The list seems to support the contention that the hive mind found on the web is, in fact, programmed to spew out random results. A couple of years ago, a researcher in the UK wanted to find the world's funniest joke. Dave Barry heard about this and had his readers send in a variety of random joke set ups that all ended with the same punch line: "there is a weasel chomping on his privates." The research into the world's best joke was forever skewed by the overwhelmingly favorable response given to these jokes. I suspect that something similar might have happened in this poll. (And you are free to conclude that I’m denial about the degree to which I’m clueless about the outside world.)

What is weirder than Mike Huckabee finishing 9th? George W. Bush was ranked 158th - narrowly beating out China's president. Huckabee 9th? Heads of the world's richest and most populous nations are 158 and 159? And why couldn't they finish in the top 10? Well, Heidi Klum (4) and Tyra Banks (5) obviously wield more influence.

John McCain (56) might be pleased to have beaten out Tina Fey (57), but can't feel good knowing that the cast of High School Musical (55) wields more influence. (But at least he can commiserate with the Pope (59) and the Dalai Lama (207)). Yet even McCain has to feel better than poor Hillary Clinton (183), who finished behind Ho Ching (a person, not a verb), and Barack Obama (63), who ranked just above Madonna.

But if you are wondering who might finally win this Democratic primary, you should know this. None of the remaining candidates came close to Al Gore's 8th place finish among the most influential. Could this list of the most influential be predicting a last-minute upset? Or has traditional media like Time just completely given up on the pretence of relevance?

Maybe the first George Bush had it wrong. Perhaps it is not so much a new world order as a new world disorder. Because if this list makes sense, the new world does not.