From the New Republic‘s profile of Nouriel Roubini:

He’s been thinking a lot not just about the way down but the way out. With the help of the Obama administration’s policies (not great, he says, but better than nothing), he sees “a light at the end of the tunnel.” To actually get to the end of it, though, the United States will have to get used to consuming less, which means China, Germany, and Japan will have to get used to producing less, which means that all the intermediaries–Chile, Australia, Brazil–will have to scale back and turn inward like everyone else. The world may curve and warp a bit, and it will be difficult, but Roubini sees good in this. Given the right changes, perhaps the United States can develop with the productive long view in mind, and maybe its human talent can be spread more equitably. “When you have more financial engineers than computer engineers, you know that the brightest minds have gone into something where, probably, the margin was excessive,” he had told me earlier. “Maybe some of these bright people are going to do something entrepreneurial, more creative, or go into government. I think that’s actually a good change.”

In my humble opinion, it’s looking like American politics is being realigned in ways unseen since 1932. Here’s why:

• Barack Obama has redefined the electoral map: “[He] is leading in every state that Kerry won in 2004. And he is either ahead or within the margin of error in ten states-yes, ten-carried by George W. Bush last time: Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.”
• The feasibility of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
• Because his candidacy goes beyond the Democratic Party. A Republican strategist on the Obama campaign: “They have basically invented their own party that is compatible with the Democratic Party but is bigger than the Democratic Party. Their e-mail list is more powerful than the DNC or RNC. In essence, Obama will be elected as an Independent with Democratic backing…”
• In 1992, Bill Clinton won the White House with 43% of the vote; Mr. Obama may win with approximately 52%.
• The Republican Party has died a political and intellectual death that it will not recover from for nearly a decade.
• According to a member of Mr. Obama’s kitchen cabinet “a lot of people around Barack are reading books about FDR’s first hundred days.”

What are the New New Deal’s Agenda Priorities?

Congressman Rahm Emmanuel, Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and a close associate of Mr. Obama, on the policy agenda for early-2009: “My view is that we gotta be the party of reform. There are four reforms. There’s financial-regulatory reform, tax reform, health-care reform, and energy. Regulatory will kinda come down the chute fast. Tax reform will take a little longer, because it’s not until 2010 that Bush’s tax cuts expire. Energy, you can do some things immediately. And with health care, you’ve got the children’s health insurance as the first piece of a series of things you gotta do.”

Mr. Obama was also recently quoted by Joe Klein of Time magazine as saying, “A new energy economy [is] going to be my No. 1 priority when I get into office.”

To this I would add something very important to the future of the American working-class: the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s passage will allow labor unions to organize workers more easily and thereby increase union membership.

Andrew Sullivan on bloggin.

The money quote: “What mankind does in the next decade will determine the future of humanity.”

The Republican Party finds itself with a existential crisis on its hands: “where do we go from here?” In a provocative challenge to conventional wisdom, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, “two of the Right’s rising young thinkers” lay a strategy for the future.

“Grand New Party lays bare the failures of the conservative revolution and presents a detailed blueprint for building the next Republican majority. [The authors argue] that it is time to move beyond the Reagan legacy and the mind-set of the current Republican power structure. In a concise examination of recent political trends, the authors show that the Democrats’ cultural liberalism makes their party inherently hostile to the interests and values of the working class. But on a host of issues, today’s Republican Party lacks a message that speaks to their economic aspirations. Grand New Party offers a new direction—a conservative vision of a limited-but-active government that tackles the threats to working-class prosperity and to the broader American Dream.”

If Republicans are mindful of Messrs. Douthat and Salam recommendations, the Democrats’ control of American government will be short lived I fear.

Dexter Filkins, a New York Times journalist who’s been reporting from Iraq since 2003, is the author of The Forever War, a masterpiece of war reporting. If you’re interested in getting a taste of the book, last August he wrote “My Long War,” an article adapted from The Forever War published in the New York Times Magazine.

Here’s an exchange he had with the Washington Post.

» WASHINGTON POST: A really striking aspect of the book is the personal bravery you exhibit throughout it. Do you see yourself as brave?
» FILKINS: [Laughs] I thank you for that. No, not really. I was just trying to figure out what was going on there and the violence was just something that had to be dealt with if we were going to figure out what was going on. So, no.

I also recommend his interview (9/29/08) with Charlie Rose recently. Amazing stuff.

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University, has an article in Vanity Fair entitled The Reversal of Fortune where he outlines his prescriptions for the US’ ailing economy. Here are some selected passages:

Our tax policies need to be changed. There is something deeply peculiar about having rich individuals who make their money speculating on real estate or stocks paying lower taxes than middle-class Americans, whose income is derived from wages and salaries; something peculiar and indeed offensive about having those whose income is derived from inherited stocks paying lower taxes than those who put in a 50-hour workweek. Skewing the tax rates in the other direction would provide better incentives where they count and would more effectively stimulate the economy, with more revenues and lower deficits.

[T]he fact is that key problems facing our society cannot be addressed without an effective government, whether it’s maintaining national security or protecting the environment. Our economy rests on public investments in technology, such as the Internet.

Spending money on needed investments—infrastructure, education, technology—will yield double dividends. It will increase incomes today while laying the foundations for future employment and economic growth. Investments in energy efficiency will pay triple dividends—yielding environmental benefits in addition to the short- and long-run economic benefits.