Priorities

The Bush administration was handed one of the biggest national security crises since Pearl Harbor... but found time to push the largest domestic spending program since Lyndon Johnson. Now, just months after President Obama declared Afghanistan to still be a 'necessary war,' he appears to be spending at least as much time packaging a federal takeover of the nation's health system as he is figuring out the endgame to the latest round of the Great Game.

Basic economics teach about opportunity costs, and the choices between "guns and butter." It's never easy to acknowledge 'you can't have it all,' but it IS a sign of maturity. And in a leader, it's absolutely essential to be able to prioritize allocation of finite resources, including political capital.

The size of our national debt, and the entrenched looting competing agendas in the District of Corruption seem to underscore just how long our nation has been without leadership. I remember how critics used to blast Ronald Reagan for the unprecedented deficits run up during America's military recapitalization in the 1980s. Their motives often were partisan, but it doesn't mean they were wrong. For all the fond memories many people have of the Reagan years, one enduring legacy is the desensitizing of the country to floods of public red ink. And while I loathe just about everything the Clinton administration represented, I will grant that for one brief, shining moment, the books were balanced -- something the U.S. as we know it will probably never accomplish again. It's simply too easy now to avoid immediate hard choices by whipping out the national credit card.

But even Congress can't increase its own credit line forever. Frankly, asking Obama to make a choice between Afghanistan and nationalized medicine is probably asking too much. In the shape our country's in, we can't afford guns OR butter anymore.