Turns out that running a political campaign on a vague, all-inclusive slogan like “Hope” can be a dangerous game. For the idealistic among us, Obama’s call for us to unleash our hope meant unleashing that latent desire for a new kind of politics. For the needy, hope could mean emergency help right now, on the line.

“Hope for me is I’ll finally get a good job.”

“I’ll be able to get my teeth fixed.”

“I’ll be able to pay for my wife’s cancer therapy.”

Hope was intrinsically too big a promise to run on. Hope unleashes dreams of the beautiful, while politics by its nature can only deliver the truly ugly and barely functioning compromise. For anyone who dared, even for a moment, to let go of a sceptical frame of mind and give flight to hope, disappointment is inevitable. Reality can never catch up with all the dreams that hope unleashes. If any of those things that were once imagined arrive, they will certainly be bent out of shape, maybe beyond recognition.

How do you like your end of war, high speed rail, Wall Street reform so far? Read more…

You’re third in line for takeoff, finally ready to depart La Guardia and get to your lunch meeting in Chicago. The pilot comes on the P.A. for a last-minute cheery message: “Thanks for your patience. We hope to make it up one we’re in the air and get you to O’Hare on time. Or at least someplace not too far from there. We’re thinking maybe Gary or Indianapolis. As the President says, we shouldn’t make the perfect the enemy of the essential. So wish us luck.”

What if that were acceptable? What if we never got where we were hoping to go, and it was okay?

What are the implications when President Obama tells us that part of his philosophy is, “We shouldn’t make the perfect the enemy of the essential?” Sounds reasonable, in a way. Don’t want to be a perfectionist about everything. Wouldn’t be realistic. Never get anything done. Got to compromise, make a deal. Make progress of some kind.

I’m not so sure about throwing the perfect overboard. Read more…

I don’t idealize a great many people that I’ve known, but Richard Maddy is an exception. A violin maker, legendary string instrument rebuilder, WWII paratrooper, and son of the founder of Interlochen Center for the Arts, I met Richard when we were both serving on the alumni board of the organization his father had founded. When the board would get bogged down in the minutiae and politics of whatever problem had wound its way around us, Richard was always there to remind us what we supposed to be doing. He would ask, in some form or another, “Is it good for the kids?” Read more…

A few years ago, my son Max and I were at the Guggenheim in New York, spiraling our way down through a show of Very Important Paintings. It was one of those shows that just wasn’t working for either of us. But we like to discuss what we’re looking at, just for the pleasure of comparing perceptions. I suggested we talk about the framing and ignore the art. An added bonus would be that anyone overhearing us would be hard pressed to connect our insights to anything we appeared to be looking at.

Within a few paintings, we had it down. “There’s a beauty. Great sense of mass, and it really works on the wall.” “You think? Seems a little over the top to me, and the felt’s fighting the forest.”

It was so much fun that whenever we happen to end up in a museum together, we just naturally fall into our discussion of the framing. The art has taken a secondary position. Read more…

I don’t go to the ballet all that often, but when I do the same thing always happens to me. By the time I get to intermission, I’m walking differently. Watching incredible dancers is a little contagious for me. I feel as if I’d like to do a grand jeté and maybe click my heels as I fly through the air. But one thing’s for sure — I’m standing a little taller. You just can’t slump after an hour of ballet.

Watching the Obamas glide through Europe this week I couldn’t help but notice that they were the center of attention wherever they went. There were a couple of particularly striking images that came back to us. First was the Obamas meeting the Queen and Prince Philip. The Queen looked tiny next to the Americans, and the royal husband looked as if he had stumbled into the wrong century. Something revolutionary had happened and he was downright wary. Read more…

Frontpaged in the NY Times today in an article by William J. Broad and Cornelia Dean is a comparison of the two presidential candidates’ plans for renewing the United States as an innovation economy. Assuming that Obama will win the election, I think it is safe to say that America will return to a deep and long term investment in science education, and in direct investment in the kind of long-term research that most corporations eschew in favor of research that offers benefits in the near-term.

Shortermism is the enemy of innovation. It might even be the enemy of civilization. Read more…

In the one-on-one Obama Clinton debate in California, Ms. Clinton at one point quietly acknowledged that although “single-payer” was the preferred health system that most Americans wanted and that most professionals who focus on fixing the healthcare system also prefer, it was not practical to even go there at this time given the forces involved.

What are the implications of that thought? It means that in this democracy, what the people want cannot be done because certain forces, not of the “people” are too strong for democracy to actually work. What was the purpose of Gettysburg? “That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Apparently, it has.