I'm scared, but not for the reason you may think.

Wow.

The economy is really going down the tubes (duh). I believe in economics as a science, as a study, as an art...and I believe that there are really smart economists and economic and social scientists out there who can probably fix it. I picture them squirreled away in their ivory towers, oaken studies, corner offices, and government cubicles reading and computing and rubbing their smudgy glasses on their ill-fitting oxfords.
We really need to be focusing on finding these people, kidnapping them, and setting them up in some high-tech collaborative Google-like campus so that they can debate and figure and FIX our economic shit day.

And then it dawned on me, and when it dawned on me, it scared the bejeezus out of me:

The person who has to be in charge of doing this round-up and making it happen via real policy manifestations -- bless his heart -- will either be John McCain or Barack Obama. Now before you think I'm going to say, "so I'm scared that neither is qualified"...hold on a sec.

That's not my fear.

My fear is that they CAN'T actually focus on this issue as much as they need to because their priority is actually not fixing the economy...it's getting elected. Sure, they sincerely want to lend a hand. They want it to get better. They really, really do gosh golly gosh gee!

But, they can't.

Getting elected and fixing the economy are two very time- and energy-consuming undertakings, and I really don't think either one of them (or, um, any human being for that matter) is the kind of multi-tasker who could tackle them both at the same time.

The person who has to fix this economy, who has to be RIGHT NOW dedicating 20 hours a day with a panel of experts and scientists, is instead roaming around the country talking in dumb third grader's language about abortion and trying to get elected. What this means is that it is almost guaranteed that the economy will not get the attention it needs.

Scary.