Go Public

President Obama has blown his chance, in the wake of the biggest corporately sponsored meltdown in memory, to remind Americans that we can't just trust the free market. Instead, the talk-radio and Fox crowds have out-communicated the Greatest Communicator in signaling to average Joes that Obama's a big-government tyrant.

We need both the public and private to work in harmony. The public sector has the public's interest in mind, based on how a democratic citizenry holds its leaders accountable. The private sector holds a short-term profit in mind, and is efficient in how it attains it.

If the public sector alone ran our food supply, we'd have healthy enough food but it'd be more expensive and less tasty. The private sector runs our food supply, which is delicious, fattening, and poisonous in a thousand ways. A smart person, free of ideological baggage, would learn from that and work toward a dynamic balance of public and private within a democracy. Health care is the best laboratory for this at the moment.