Pavlov's Hot Dog

Today's the day you weigh in on how the people you employ to keep your government and your economy healthy and thriving are doing, and whether or not you want to rehire them.

An entire populace can check its pulse, stress levels and bank book, and with relative ease, vote to continue in the same direction, or make a change and bring in new people.

Our nation's founders were big believers in regularly scheduled change, probably because they understood that it's a lot easier to vote than to wage a revolutionary war.

The four-year interval they specified for executive change was ambitious and intriguing, considering how slowly business and daily life moved in 1788. News, or long-distance financial transactions, moved at the speed of a horse. Or, for overseas transactions, a frigate.

Now consider the lightning BlackBerry speed with which completely unregulated, high risk, over-the-counter credit default swaps circled the globe and grew from an estimated notational amount of $13.9 trillion in December 2005 to between $45 and $62 trillion today but of course nobody really knows for sure and you can see wheeeeeee how fast that change got away from us.

And while decades-old notions of trickle down and trickle up economics were being debated during the campaign, the plug had already been pulled on the vast middle class and that gushing sound you heard was the spending power that fuels over 70% of the U.S. economy going bye-bye.

Except for that big chunk that's frozen for nobody really knows how long because in an unprecedented redistribution of wealth we can barely begin to fathom, Congress gave banks billions of dollars in hopes they'd feel better and start lending again. Instead they're buying up other banks which reduces competition and oh yes also giving their executives huge bonuses which probably isn't the change Congress was hoping for which tells me a) they needed to be more specific in handing out the money which shame on them they should have known, and b) they really weren't equipped to handle this kind of rapid decision-making in the face of such unprecedented change in our economy.

Which also tells me that more than ever we need leaders who are visionaries and can process the rapid rate of change in the world. This may not be the person you'd most like to have a beer with, but that's OK, you can still have a beer with people you like, if you can afford it. We need leaders who are way ahead of the curve.

Functionally, our executive branch should be versed in change and at the very least fluent in using email. And they're going to have to have brilliant advisors who can comprehend the ways the technologically adept can game the system (Department of TRON) and also how to work with the vast middle as it writhes its way through unacceptably painful changes and morphs into something else, perhaps via its own shadow economy (Secretary of the Squishy.)

And then there's our broken down system of health care delivery, that so many are afraid to change or even tinker with, as if it were working. It's going to take astute leaders who can take an entirely fresh and thorough look. This is where I get on my soapbox and remind individual Americans that just as your votes add up to elect your leaders, your individual health behaviors add up to a healthy nation or a sick nation. With both deficits and health care costs spiraling out of control, making even small improvements in our health habits is one of the few areas where we can each make a difference that helps lower costs for our over-burdened system.

The last eight years have changed America profoundly and no one can predict what kind of drastic changes might still be ahead for the American people, and the rest of the world by association.

But what if we were stuck for decade after decade after decade with a government as incompetent as the one we've had the past eight years? Would you feel so desperate as to hop aboard a wooden boat, cross an ocean, and play Survivor for real in a strange land with no phones to call home? Would you fight a war to get free of a lousy ruler? Would you back away from your computer screen and go vote?

Two hundred years ago some guys got together and built a system of government based on constant and regular executive change. They picked four years as the interval, based on what, I don't know, but I'm sure glad they did. And the rest is history.