President Obama's "Waterloo?" PLEASE!

In recent news, notable conservatives backed Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-S.C.) statement that the health care crisis and President Obama’s anticipated policy challenges will be his “Waterloo.”

Conservatives should not be afraid of change, just conservative about it. We need to try something new. If it doesn't work, we can always ditch the effort and try something else. Our flexibility as a nation is the essence of innovation and what has helped our society and economy adapt and thrive in the past.

As always in these political tug-of-wars one side will select hyperbole and inappropriate metaphors to scare the populace. This one, like many the Republicans have resorted to in recent years, is embarrassing to any reasonable conservative. Such language applied tongue-in-cheek can raise a chuckle, but with the shrill vitriol of the Republican death rattle such rhetoric causes a rolling of the eyes and creates even more contempt for the Right. It is a shame, since the principles of honest and constructive debate have done more good overall in histroy even though political castration of one side over the other remains a long and ignoble American tradition.

Instead of Obama's Waterloo, how about Obama's Carthage? He loses this battle and the political soil that results may be so plowed with salt as to render it infertile for years to come, even, to extend the analogy, with people dying in the streets. This view would suggest that he does not have much chance of winning against a hostile Roman army intent on killing every living thing in sight.

Let's get back to healthy polarities - those that help us think about the pros and cons of policy initiatives and raise our awareness of the issues surrounding change and its reversal should things not work out as we would prefer.

It Is Who You Know, Actually

Because of the availability of knowledge (explicit - for KMers) on the Web, inside and outside of organizations, putting together a paper or a report or any communication of recombined and repurposed knowledge is easy. Almost anyone can do it. Therefore, the social network one develops is becoming asymptotically important. The rise of Facebook and LinkedIn, for example, has provided people a way to tap into far-flung friends and acquaintances who may have some business value to share.