Much was made of Cheney’s group’s membership and activities, including the extreme secrecy surrounding it. An uproar over the taskforce led Congress to investigate and even file a lawsuit to gain more information, although their efforts were unsuccessful. The Washington Post reported,

“One of the first visitors, on Feb. 14 [2001], was James J. Rouse, then vice president of Exxon Mobil and a major donor to the Bush inauguration; a week later, longtime Bush supporter Kenneth L. Lay, then head of Enron Corp., came by for the first of two meetings. On March 5, some of the country’s biggest electric utilities, including Duke Energy and Constellation Energy Group, had an audience with the task force staff.”

“Jack N. Gerard, then with the National Mining Association, had a meeting with Lundquist and other [Energy Task Force] staffers in February. He urged the administration to give the Energy Department responsibility for promoting technology for easing global warming and to keep the issue away from the Environmental Protection Agency, which could issue regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. The administration adopted that position.”

With a administration run by former energy magnates, and advised by and outsourced to corporate America, it is both unsurprising and no coincidence that now, the economy is the worst it has been since the Great Depression of the 1930s, our dependence of foreign energy is at an all-time high, and efforts to fight global warming are all but non-existent. And it is somewhat ironic that today, the same day vice-president Biden announces the creation of his middle-class task force, his predecessor’s beneficiary, ExxonMobil, announces a full-year profit of $45.2 billion, setting a new company and U.S. record.

It took less than eight years for Bush administration policies and ideologies to destroy this nation economically, politically, and morally. President Obama and vice-president Biden have taken appropriate steps on numerous fronts to right the ship of state. It’s time the Right, which is locked in a deep battle for its identity and ideology today, open its eyes and recognize its policies are wrong, and realize it has wrecked America, wounded its people, and begin to apologize.

The punditocracy is swimming in an ocean of its own hysteria, awash with its own failed analysis and prediction, and flailing about now, attempting to make sense of a sea-change in the perception of where the American psyche has landed. Much like a game of “pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey” they are poking the wall, blind-folded. Or, perhaps they imagine themselves as Goldilocks: “Center-Left”? No. Too hot! “Center-Right”? No. Too cold! “Center”? Just right! (Except, it’s not!)

In truth, Americans are far more complex, mired in decades of religious and social branding that has outlived its usefulness, and left us with nameplates that utterly fail and are inconsistent with our current beliefs. Yes, America has changed. Americans have changed. If there’s one thing that America does, it is change. And yet, the Right is tripping over itself today, (and it will be even more tomorrow,) trying desperately to (1) smoke out those it considers to be its inner Benedict Arnolds; (2) stamp out any and all discussion about its failure, and grab this opportunity to immediately move the party as far right as possible; and (3) do what it does best: throw stones at Democrats.

Here we are, one week to the day that America decided not that it wanted a black president, but that it wanted a smart president. After eight years of leadership by the man voted “the guy I’d most like to have a beer with“, America decided this time it would try brains over beer. (We even decided to vote against the husband of a beer-queen!) Every indication, including Obama’s choice of Chief of Staff, his successful first news conference as president-elect, and yesterday’s meeting with outgoing president Bush, says that Obama is on the right track. His team has already put together a plan to undo some of the damage the soon-to-be-former president inflicted on this nation, and his approval ratings are the mirror image of Mr. Bush’s. CNN’s latest poll offers Americans leery of Obama this reassurance:

“So far, Obama seems to be meeting the public’s high expectations. Two-thirds of all Americans have a positive view of what he has done since he was elected president, and three-quarters think he will do a good job as president.”

So, indeed, what does all this say about where we are? Is the a post-partisan period? A post-racial period? Are Americans now officially “Center-Left”? Is, as Pat Buchanan said last week, the Conservative Era dead? Are we, as Bill Kristol seems to still believe, still “Center-Right“? No, to all the above.

The problem America faces is one that manifest destiny began in the 19th century. Back then, we became a big country with not a lot of folks in it. 17.1 million, to be exact. Today, we are a country of 305.6 million, almost eighteen times as many people as we were 170 years ago. And that’s just too many people who are daily flooded with information and mis-information, most of whom are tethered with beliefs about what constitutes “right” and “wrong”, as well as “right” and “left”. And those views and beliefs are, now more than ever, subject to change. 

The question is not “Is America a Center-Right or a Center-Left country?”. The question is, as a country, what parts of those platforms do we want to embrace, and what parts do we want to discard? And then, how do we get there? And finally, who do we choose to make certain we do?

Speaking of The New York Times, and Mr. Krugman, his column appears on today’s Op-Ed page, across from William Kristol’s. Mr. Kristol’s column, entitled, Fire the Campaign, offers this observation:

“The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic. If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed.”

He is, of course, correct. The McCain campaign, McCain himself, is a picture of erratic ignorance. Senator McCain is not an unintelligent man, but one who consistently makes poor and ill-informed, if not outright uninformed decisions. 

Kristol continues, essentially making the argument against McCain, and stating McCain

“…should tell the truth — we’re in uncharted waters, no one is certain what to do, and no one knows what the situation will be on Jan. 20, 2009. But what we do know is that we could use someone as president who’s shown in his career the kind of sound judgment and strong leadership we’ll need to make it through the crisis.”

As is often the case, Kristol is just wrong (as is evidenced here, here, especially here, and, oh heck, just look here), and now wrong in insisting “no one is certain what to do”. Read (now) Nobel-winning Paul Krugman’s piece, “Gordon Does Good“, in which he writes:

“…the Brown government has shown itself willing to think clearly about the financial crisis, and act quickly on its conclusions. And this combination of clarity and decisiveness hasn’t been matched by any other Western government, least of all our own.”

Right now, the DOW is up almost 600 points, following similar increases in European and Asian markets. The general consensus is that this weekend’s G7 meeting was sufficiently successful, and the huge infusion of capital is calming fears enough to give the markets some stability. Krugman continues:

“At a special European summit meeting on Sunday, the major economies of continental Europe in effect declared themselves ready to follow Britain’s lead, injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into banks while guaranteeing their debts. And whaddya know, Mr. Paulson — after arguably wasting several precious weeks — has also reversed course, and now plans to buy equity stakes rather than bad mortgage securities (although he still seems to be moving with painful slowness).”

Once again, the Right (McCain) and its mired-in-the-mud proponents (Kristol) miss the point, which is this: it takes intelligent leaders who are willing to gather information and informed and intelligent advisors, (such as prime minister Gordon Brown, and as Senator Obama have done,) and consider other perspectives to move the ball forward. And it shouldn’t take a Nobel-winner to see this simple truth. Unfortunately, Senator McCain hasn’t, and most likely never will.