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Me Time

The last couple of days for me have been all about taking care of personal business - from a trip to the dentist (no root canal! Yea!), to a trip to the doctor (basically fine! Yea!), to the delivery of my new, fantastic mattress (comfy! Yea!).

(Interjections! For excitement! Or emotion!)

All of that - combined with the capture, yesterday, of the raccoon that had been living in our attic - kept me from writing, and kept the focus on me. Which, really, is not generally where I like the focus to be. Taking care of myself, being attentive to y own needs... remains the thing that I'm not necessarily attuned to, or good at.

I am getting there, though, slowly. And now, armed with a comfy bed, a general sense of reasonably good health, and a little time... I should be able to get back into a more regular writing groove. Hopefully.

I Even Have A Note From The Doctor...

The story of my silence thus far:

• Thursday the 17th: work a really hard, ugly middle shift in my old store.
• Friday the 18th: Have a man come to the house to see if we have mice - we don't, it's probably a raccoon. Attend a difficult meeting in said old store. Then go to see No Strings Attached (and want to review it), buy a new mattress for my bed, and dinner out with mom.
• Saturday the 19th: Have a man come to the house about the raccoon. Attend Red's baby shower, which runs well into the evening. Come home from that (in a raging wind storm), and go straight to bed.
• Sunday the 20th: Open at my new store, come home and meet the wild animal guy (the trap nearly blew away in said wind storm), go to see "I Am Number 4"... then spend 2 hours in the Emergency Room (and I want to write bout that too). Get sent home, go straight to bed.
• Today: Off to open the old store. And it's snowing.

I don't like to make excuses... but can you see why I might be having some trouble keeping up with the posting?

Seriously, I even have a note fomr the doctor. In the Emergency Room.

More later, barring any more disasters. :)

I'll Wait...

The news, these days, seems stuck on two storylines: covering the wave of uinrest across the Middle East and breathlessly reporting every minor step in Washington's painful budget process (chances are, that's followed locally by news in your state about the state level budget crises).

If I'm not writing much these days, and especially not much about politics, it's because I think a lot of this budget maneuvering is meaningless. Republicans in the House couldn't get their most extreme cuts past the Senate or signed by the President, and the President's new budget can't pass the House, and most of the speeches and news interviews are posturing with few real suggestions of a workable compromise. If nothing changes, then there's little likelihood of anything getting done. And for now... I'll wait and see what develops, but I don't expect much.

Everybody's got - well every political junkie like me, anyway, all nine of ya - their pet budget issues, and mine, as I've said is healthcare; or in the current language of budget talks 2 of the big 3 "entitlements" of Medicare and Medicaid. Like many on all sides of the budget discussion, I tend to agree that without some attempt to tackle health care costs through these two programs, it's impossible to significantly redue the deficit (you could cut defense spending, another unpopular topic, but you'd stil be stuck). So my test for any seriousness in these discussions of deficit reduction is: how seriously are they planning to reform Medicare or Medicaid?

By that measure, I'd say we're miles, and years, away from any serious or deep change. President Obama's budget did essentially nothing to tackleeither of these problems, and he admitted, basically, that he's not doing anything until Republicans offer a proposal. Republicans haven't offered much, either. John Boehner says he wants to remove President Obama's Medicare cuts from the Affordable Care Act and replace them with other "market based" reforms, and Paul Ryan now says he wants to turn Medicare into a "defined contribution" program, where the government subsidizes private health insurnce for seniors (yes, off in the distance there, you can see "mandate" in the offing), and then a system of "defined payments" for Medicaid, which means block grants to states.

Both are pretty much useless. Boehner's new version of "repeal and replace" is about as unserious as the "cuts" that Democrats have claimed to have enacted, but haven't and likely won't come to pass. Though Dems have cut funding for Medicare Advantage, which allowed some seniors to obtain HMO coverage rather than use traditional Medicare (which matters especially to seniors in rural areas where services may be scarce), Congress already put off, again, reforms to the reimbursement fees to doctors and has no plans to follow through on other cuts. Boehner's "market based" reforms is basically code for restoring the Medicare Advantage money, and some lip service about "waste fraud and abuse" but they have even less stomach for reducing reimbursements, which would be the crux of reforming the healthcare market. So much for "market based."

Ryan's proposal is interesting, but unlikely to amount to much; like much of his "Roadmap", it's a proposal Republicans support until actual hard choices have to be made (remember how they were cutting $100 million from this year's government spending, only to get to about $68?). Ryan's proposal would theoretically take the government out of the "price setting" role it has in healthcare through Medicare's reimbursement rates... but that's illusory because the "defined contribution" role, by its definition, would do the same thing. Also, there's a reason Medicare was started in the first place, and it's because private insurers don't particularly want to insure the oldest and sickest members of our population who require the most and costliest care. Ryan's Medicaid idea is even more fanciful: states alreeady can barley cover Medicaid costs, and that's under a formula that offers some flexibility to get additional federal money. Take even that small cushion away, and you're just making healthcare for poor people that much worse

The main point, though,  is that Ryan's proposals - or Boehner's - don't exist as legislation. Indeed, there's no indication that Ryan can write a bill with either proposal that can pass the House - even the Medicaid plan, which might be attractive to the House majority, will elicit howls from state Governors, mainly Republicans - never mind, again, the Senate or the President's desk. Better still, I don't think Ryan can even muster the relatively painful exercise of following through on soke sort of reimbursement reform in Medicare fees (which, by formula, would also affect Medicaid), and that's just basic - a House majority that can't cut costs by, well, cutting them... can't claim seirousness on deficit reduction.

In some sense all this roiling in Washington - and the implicit threat to voters of "don't keep yelling at us to cut something... or we will" - is pretending to make something not hard look very hard and complicated. It would be eay to cut the budget: just stop spending as much. The problem is, a government that actually spends less would be a government doing less, and that, in turn, would make people's lives harder. The math is not the problem... it's the potential results that are where the real pain lies.

Ryan and others are already trying to calim that "political demagoguery" is the problem, as a way to protect themselves from the negative fallout of proposals to cut Medicare or Social Security (remember, no one speaks for the poor, so Medicaid protests won't be heard). The harsher reality is that historically voters have punished Congresses that have cut those programs, and my bet - as many others do - is that voters wouldn't hesitate, in 2012, to do much the same thing. And for now, fear of being punished is really the beginning and end of why nothing has really happened on the budget. I'll wait... but I think we're going to find, in the coming months, that all of the notions of breathess drama and pitched budget battles will end in a muddle of both sides doing very little to reduce spending, or deficits, especially when it comes to the big, painful decisions needed on healthcare. And that's not necessarily good fiscal policy... but given this crop of politicians, I think failure and stasis may be the best result.

Best. Speech. Ever. As Usual.

Before he'd even finished speaking - which was as good a definition of "rush to judgment" you're likely to get - the usual suspects were already offering their familiar refrain: "The best speech he ever gave," "he hit it out of the park" and on and on. Today will surely be filled with more of those exquisitely uncomfortable expressions of hero worship and mass love that seem to follow President Obama, sometimes quietly, often loud and gushing, Don't get between the hero and his adoring crowd.

The Tucson "Memorial Service" - if it can be called that - is already taking its place in the "legendary" and "historic" pantheon of those ever great, ever best, speeches that President oBama gives at regular intervals. Almost like some doppelganger reflection of the low standards applied to the Bush Presidency - where merely reading the text without stumbling became the low bar for his supporters of his greatness - President Obama endures a standard where his most recent remarks are somehow always his best, the most wonderful, the most ideal. It is the best of all possible worlds. How could it be otherwise?

It will no doubt seem churlish to some to suggest that, from a distance, absent both the "Obama wonderful" sensibilities and the pump priming for mass grieving on cue, that the event, and especially the President's speech, tended to fall flat, and seemed not especially appropriate, or on point. From the cheering, screaming crowds better suited to a Basketball final than a moment to grieve or mourn; to the generic, banal thoughts the President offered as (fairly cold) comfort, nothing last night seemed to work quite the way it should. And the net result, in the long run, is the net result President Obama has garnered from all his "best ever" speeches: good will with a short half life, and the sure sense that after his remarks, nothing really is or will be any different.

Gabrielle Giffords, The Politics Of Violence, And A Lot Of Crazy Talk

Conservatives have spent the past 18 hours or so trying to deflect or change the topic to anything other than than the role of angry conservative rhetoric and its role in the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. They're probably wrong to argue that it can't be brought up... but probably right that, on balance, politics is really not the problem that led to Giffords and more than a dozen others being shot in a Safeway parking lot in Tucson.

The real lesson here, I suspect, is that many conservatives were caught short by the realization that Giffords was, and is, to many on the left, already a hero and a widely admired political survivor.

And I'm not just generalizing: I happen to love Tucson, and spent some time there, just last year. My mom gave money to Giffords via EMILY's List, and like many of the candidates, Giffords sent a mass Christmas card. Of all the ones we received from politicians, Giffords' card seemed the most natural and unforced.

There's no way, I think, for the politics of violence and the violent rhetoric of "lock and load" conservatism doesn't become a part of the discussion around the shotting. It decidedly doesn't help that Sarah Palin put up a "target map" of 20 Democratic Representatives she wanted to unseat, each distric marked in the cross-hairs of a gun sight. (and of the 20, 18 lost. Giffords was one of the two that targeting failed to remove).

But James Fallows of The Atlantic is probably right, and while the poltical climate is ripe for some examination... the story of mass shootings isn't defined by easy to explain political motives. And already, it's coming into focus that the alleged shooter in this case, as in so many others in recent years, is probably a story of untreated mental illness, and our societal failure in turning mental health into a law enforcement problem.

It's not Jared Lee Loughner's politics that will explain what led him to that parking lot with a Glock pistol, his mindset not defined by either his interest in Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto. Already, descriptions of "deeply disturbed" and "mentally unstable" have crept into explanations of his past actions, and the developing history of strange ramblings and inappropriate behavior in classroom settings is coming into focus.

The bigger problem now, as always, is that we have no way in this country to talk, reasonably or sensibly about mental illness, look rationally at the dilemmas we face in our failures to help people get diagnosed and treatedwhen issues of netal health are involved.There will be the perjorative attempts to label Louughner as "crazy" or "nuts", and there will be a loud pushback from those who fear stigmatizing all mental illnesses as prone to violence, dangerous, or needing to be locked up. People will try to find meaning in the rambling words, yet again, of someone who is quite possibly delusional, without providing any context. Our struggle to make sense of actions and decisions that are often inexplicable will go on.

Conservatives have done a terrible job, in recent years, of drawing lines and putting boundaries around practices and rhetoric, and those failings continue to haunt them when white supremacists rage, when militiamen wave their guns, Thinking about that last night, I realized that in some ways, this is about a little discussed divide in politics: consewrvatives tend to distrust the idea of groups and group thinking while enshrining the indvidual, however angry; while liberals believe much more in the power of organizing, and are leery of giving too much power or crdence ot one person. That dichotomy goes a long way to explaining conservative distrust of unions, organized workers, and protest groups... and the liberal concern for the separatists who hide in the woods with their guns (as well as their distrust of the kind of hero worship on the right for Ronald Reagan, or George W. Bush). What each side wants the other to do - expel outlying individuals, or discredit extremist groups - is often a direct challenge to a larger mindset.

These are the times when, for better and worse, we are watching the triumph of a David Brooks-like "sensible center," the people who stand for the proposition that the problem in our politics is that we've "gone too far" or "pushed the extremes." If we get a moment where the heated rhetoric gets dialed down, where some extremes of language get toned back... that's probably helpful for resetting, and reinvigorating the national political debate. It would, at least, suggest some sort of good coming out of a terrible tragedy. But conservatism didn't get Gabrielle Giffords and others sshot; Sarah Palin didn't put a gun into Jared Lee Loughner's hand. That's crazy talk... and it's the kind of thing we need less of, if we plan to have thoughtful discourse. But, if we did that, I suppose, then bringing up the topic of actual mental illness and how better to address mental health issues wouldn't seem so strange. Crazy... I know.

Health Care Reform's Latest Much Ado About Nothing

It's my line and I'm sticking to it: the real story of "health care reform" in the time of Obama is a story about what isn't happening, much more than what is, a theater of the absurd where a lot of people run around screaming, but nothing much really happens. And my advice remains: stay seated, and quiet.

Here's this month's storyline in a nutshell: The House Republicans have proposed a "repeal" of the Affordable Care Act. It will pass the House, because of their new majority. And it will be meaningless.

Now, can we all just get on with our lives?

Something About Health Care, The Courts, And Labels

In the fog of illness - I'm doing somewhat better, but nowhere near 100% - trying to keep up with current events is both challenging and surreal. I can't quite concentrate enough to follow all the details, and the whole things becomes a blur. There was a court case. Richard Holbrooke died. Bloomberg is speaking. Somehow this must all fit together.

The problem, partly, rests outside of me: the 24 hour news cycle has flattened information until everything is news and nothing is news, all at once - both "I already knew that" and "why did I need to know that" at once. So many things are happening... and yet, nothing, really, is going on at all.

Maybe that's why I found somehting in the juxtaposition Monday between the xecision of a federal judge in Virginia to invalidate the "insurance mandate" provision of Health Care "Reform" laid up against the "No Labels" meeting of prominent people who think we should stop sorting people into left and right so rigidly. The latter was neatly summed up, I think, when I said to my mom during coverage of the event "that seems kind of dumb" with her responding "it is, but that's not the point."

I don't remember what the point was - the convenience of a cold! - but I think if there's one place I'd like to apply "no labels" it's to the Judiciary. We've been wandering down this sad road of politicizing judges and judging for years (i tend to trace it back, as many do, to some of the uglier judicial fights of the Reagan years, especially Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court), and we're really not better for it. And not just because of conservatives and the Right Wing, but also because many lefties - my mom included - have a kind of faith that progressive causes can ultimately be won through a judge's decision.

I've never been thrilled that Marriage Equality hinges, basically, on a court case, but at least that's the kind of advance that folows logically from previous law, a gay people's Loving vs. Virginia. And the thing is... I don't think that's the kind of decision that actually hinges on left versus right. When we look at ideas of equality and freedom enshrined in our constitutional law, I don't think "left" or "right" really matters. There are different ways to interpret the law, different approaches to the law... but ultimately, there is the agreement that we have laws, and a sense of how to organize a civil society. Why do we insist on needing to politicize even the ajudication of the law?

What's sad about Judge Hudson's decision is how it neatly falls into the easy left/right chasm that's coming to define litigation about the Affordable Care Act. A longtime Republican with close political ties to opponents of the reform bill, Hudson found - surprise! - that the insurance mandate was unconstitutional. Two other judges - Surprise! Appointed by Democrats! - found the oppsite. So now we can pretty mcuh expect all of this to wind up at the Suprem Court where - surprise! - we already assume that 4 judges (the ones appointed by Democrats) will approve of it and 4 judges (you guessed it) won't... and we all agree that Anthony Kennedy has the final say... because he's apparently one of those people who craves attention by being in the "middle."

I've said before, I tend to think the mandate, or something like it, is probably constitutional; health insurance is already part of the tax code (that's the Employer tax break that fuels our employment based system) and "proof of insurance or pay a penalty" doesn't strike me as a bridge too far. Ken Cucinelli's attempts to blow this into a major constitutional crisis seem illustrative of how he's not going to work out, mostly. But I can see the opposite side of, say, requiring everyone to provide proof a cable TV subscription, or pay a fee... how do you distinguish between a fee that's reasonable and a fee that's too far?

(Insert much longer argument about why the whole health care "reform" bill was a bad idea here, and follow it with observation that mandate, alone, is hardly the main issue of why this law is flawed, here.)

That, after all, is what the law is for: to figure out these kind of nuances, to figure out how and where the lines get drawn, and how to enforce those lines. I think it's fair to ask the questions; I think it's a necessary part of our civics to try and draw the lines. And still, I don't think this should be political, not the way it's become. The unfortunate thing about the "insurance mandate" case is not that it will be decided one way or another; it's that the decision, either way, will be seen as one side's political triumph, rather than a clear, legal resolution of a contentious issue that we can all find sensible and useful. We'll be worse off for that, however it gets resolved.

Texas And The Medicaid Mess

I just want to expand on one of the pieces I linked to from yesterday, because I think the underlying issue is crucial: the state if Texas may not drop out of Medicaid, but the debate they're having is a good indication about the real crisis that healthcare reformers are about to face.

This was my main point furing the painful, seemingly endless process that created the Affordable Care Act, and it seems to be coming true much the way I predicted. Within days of a painful midterm election, it's become clear that the costs associated with expanding Medicaid will be a big issue for states and for the Federal Government.

And the problem for Democrats is that so much of what was wrong with the original bill is summed up so neatly in trying to address the problems with Medicaid.

Many progressives, though, are missing the shape of the coming debate, focusing too hard on the Texas example and the extreme edges. The reality is that Texas will not get out of Medicaid, for a variety of reasons; and really, all the Texas legislature did was direct the state's Department of Public Health to study the possible effects of exiting Medicaid. It's entirely likely that when the study cmes back, the reasons for not giving up Medicaid dollars will become breathtakingly clear.

None of that means the issues will go away.

Morning Morsels: A Healthy Diet Of Common Sense

As bad as this Tuesday's election results were, and as many problems as the results perpetuate (and how few will be solved), there does some to be a resurgence, in some quarters, of saying some sensible things that make common sense. And though I spent some moments this morning (I wake up early, and screaming) being annoyed iwth some of the pointless bloilerplate of lefty apologists (Please stop me before I read Steve Benen or Mori Dinauer ever again!), I also was blown away by some sharp assessments of things that might actually matter. So for this morning, a few morsels of ideas that might get us to talk about the things that really need fixing:

1. Suzy Khimm, the healthcare crisis reporter at Mother Jones, has been guest posting at Ezra Klein's Washington Post blog, and she offers the most clear-eyed assessment of the painful debate about Medicaid that's coming, discussing the decision in Texas to consider dropping out of the program altogether:

To be sure, there's no question that Medicaid has been costly for state governments, and it's understandable that the lingering recession would make state officials feel panicky about the future expansion. There are deeper programs still: the cash-strapped program only pays providers 66 percent of Medicare reimbursement rates, making it hard for Medicaid patients to find doctors who accept their coverage. Such dilemmas strengthen the argument for simply federalizing the entire Medicaid program, protecting it from the ideological and fiscal battles on the state level.

But until the day comes that a better Medicaid overhaul is possible, states must also realize that simply trying to wash their hands of the problem by stripping Medicaid coverage from the poor — without providing a reasonable alternative — won't be the answer either. The uninsured poor will continue to get sick. They will continue to seek out health care. And many institutions — including state governments — will still end up paying for it.

2: Ezra's also been featuring his pal Dana Goldstein, whose focus on education issues leads to a great point about where "progressives" and conservatives find common ground on the wrong aspects of education reform:

This morning I heard a lecture by British education expert Geoff Whitty on the emerging similarities between school reform efforts in the Obama-era United States and the Cameron-era U.K., particularly around the concepts of school choice and accountability. Whitty was critical of policy makers and the media for selectively citing research findings in support of charter schools and — more interestingly and counter-intuitively — for being obsessed with finding “what works” in education and other social policy areas.

The “what works” framework, Whitty argued, tends to privilege attempts to create alternative administrative structures (like charter schools), when in fact, other types of interventions may be equally — if not more — effective.

3. Via the entirely hopeless Steve Benen, Ross Douthat makes the best case I've seen that Republicans are going to do themselves in by having no real plan for the issues they ran on:

Today’s Republicans, by contrast, know what they’re against (the health care bill, tax increases, cap and trade) but have a world of trouble saying what they might actually be for.

Instead, they tend to fall back on the reassuring story they’ve been spinning for the last two years, in which they lost to the Democrats only because they failed to hold the line on spending. It’s a narrative that flatters conservative self-regard, while absolving Republicans of the obligation to think too deeply about policy. All they need to do is say “no” to bigger government, and the rest will take care of itself.

This strategy has worked for them in opposition, thanks to the Democratic Party’s haste and hubris. But it isn’t a blueprint for governance, and it ducks the real reasons that the Republicans lost their majority. While the Bush administration overspent, it wasn’t spending and deficits that turned the country against conservative domestic policy between 2004 and 2008. It was the fact that the Republican majority seemed to have no answers to Middle America’s economic struggles, and no appetite for the structural reforms required to keep the United States competitive.

This is even more true today. The United States is facing three overlapping crises — the short-term challenge of a jobless recovery, the long-term crisis of entitlement spending and, in the medium term, an economy that wasn’t delivering for the middle class even before the financial crisis struck. The Democratic Party may have the wrong answers to these problems. But the Republican Party as an institution often seems to have no answers whatsoever.

4. Over at Open Left, Mike Lux offers some of the best breakdown of why middle/working class voters shifted to voting for Republicans. I don't share his hopeful assessment of how Democrats can fix their problems, but this seems dead on:

I wrote early in 2009 that voters were going to be in a very bad mood in November of 2010, and that this would be a blame election, where economically stressed swing voters would be wanting to take their misery out on someone. I was certainly right about that, but here's the ironic thing: I suggested that since I thought it was unlikely we could get them to blame the economy on Bush since we were in charge now, that our best hope was to get them to blame it on Wall Street. They did, that 35% who laid the blame on Wall Street's door were primarily the middle class swing voter bloc in this election, but they associated us Democrats and Obama with Wall Street more than Republicans. The TARP bailout and Obama and Geithner's vigorous defense of it, the kid glove treatment of the big banks at the hands of Geithner, the AIG and big bank bonuses that closely followed, the failure to prosecute or break up the Too Big To Fail banks: it all came together in those angry middle class voters' minds as Obama being associated with the same Wall Street actors people were blaming for their economic problems. The fact that once the financial reform bill that had some important wins for the middle class was passed, Democrats barely ever talked about it again didn't help.

5. And finally, David Sirota(!) over at Open Left takes apart the Olbermann mess and highlights the "Hollywood Minute" problem with our celebrity happy culture:

Most Americans struggling in this economic crisis probably don't even know and/or don't even care who Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow or their counterparts on the Right are. That's no knock on Olbermann or Maddow at all - I have great respect for them and for the work they do. It's just a statement of reality that only seems shocking to uber-political junkies who, ensconced in the political media bubble, tend to overstate the cultural penetration of the political media class. And if members of the Silent Majority - ie. those outside that bubble - caught wind of the media back-and-forth over the Olbermann suspension (granted, a big if), it probably served as proof that the political media class really is narcissistic enough to believe the Broadcast News adage that they're the story - even during a Great Recession when media controversies shouldn't be the story.

Again, I'm happy that MSNBC only ended up suspending Olbermann for two days, and it's probably a good thing in the long run that the whole situation highlighted questions of ideology and partisanship in professional journalism. But it also highlights some really disturbing truths about the celebrity-prioritizing nature of our political activist culture - truths that, if left unaddressed, will likely continue to make it difficult to organize around the most important non-celebrity causes like, ya know, fixing the economy.

 

The Liberal Post-Election Narrative: In Which "Hope And Change" Becomes Change Nothing... And Hope For The Worst.

Losing is not fun.

I don't think it's surprising that in the wake of enormous losses, many progressive bloggers and media types started looking for something, anything to explain away the loss of the House of Representatives, particularly any excuse that didn't involve admitting mistakes on their own part.

But we did lose, and we lost big, and without looking at the failures within the Democratic Establishment, there's little likelihood of improvement aytime soon.

Already, there's been a hardening of "Nancy Pelosi and the House leadership did nothing wrong." This strikes me as the most dangerous misreading - which has lead, directly, to Pelosi's decision to remain House Minority Leader - and an argument for doing nothing, rather than changing. Come January, the House leadership among Democrats will look basically the same (as will the Senate, though at least Harry Reid can claim some substantial victories, including his own, which limited GOP gains to the low end of projected wins). The only replacement will be the head of DCCC, which at least is not rewarding Chris Van Hollen for losses, though that position generally shifts after every election.

Although I was never a fan of President Obama's vague exhortations for "hope and change", it's clear that the voters who went for it expected government to do things differently, and many were disappointed. I tend to argue that the failure of Obama's rhetoric lay in his failure to apply it rigorously within his own Party, and particularly, to challenge leaders like Pelosi and Reid to change how Congress was doing business. There's a resistance to structural change in the Democratic Party lately that's fascinating in a party so committed to liberalism and the appeal of new ideas. And so, only two years after his victory, perhaps the biggest loss for the President this past week was within his own party, which has given up on both hope and change. For Democrats, for now, there will be no change. And the only hope - and it's a dismal way to go forward - is a hope for the worst: praying for the failure of Boehner's House majority is a wish for further economic strife, greater international conflict and paralyzing gridlock out of Washington. For the President to be a leader - and I'm not sure he can be - he will need to lead his own party into a better, more constructive, and more flexible notion of what progress means.

Below the fold, let's take apart some of the wrong political lessons, and look at some of the right ones: