Friday, September 7, 2012

Spilled Milk

When my children were small they unintentionally created big messes. Spilled milk was the most frequent. The child bumped the full glass and over it went, milk pooling across the table and dripping onto the floor.

I would spring into action, swabbing up milk with a sponge as fast as I could. Inevitably milk continued to run under plates, onto the floor and into the child's lap. No matter how fast I worked, cleaning up the mess took far, far longer to clean up than it did to create.

This event, which every parent has experienced, is analogous to the Great Recession, which we are still trying to recover from. George Bush had eight years to turn a budget surplus into a monstrous budget deficit, while investment banks ran rampant, jobs were shipped overseas, two wars were started and the middle class lost its footing.

How on earth can Barak Obama be expected to have cleaned up the mess in just four years?

We parents know how long it takes to clean up spilled milk compared to the time it takes to spill it: far, far longer.

We also know that there is no quick fix; we have to slog through it.. We try to control the damage while sopping up milk as fast as we can, but it can't be accomplished in one fell swoop. Eventually order is restored, but the meal is interrupted for some time.

Let's be patient.

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