MULTI-FRONT MANDATE

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson is convinced that “Obama is right to pile his plate high.” Robinson argues

Advice to "fix" the financial system before even thinking about health care, energy or education is either misguided or disingenuous.

And

This isn't about Rahm Emanuel's too-cute admonition not to "waste" a good crisis. It's about honoring a clear mandate.

Robinson continues by bemoaning the “multitrillion-dollar bailout for the banks,” a “wasteful and ruinously expensive” health care system, and “dependen[cy] on foreign oil.”

He continues: “The ‘overload’ criticism makes sense, until you think about it.” And “I would argue that a laserlike focus on the financial crisis, to the exclusion of everything else, is unlikely to improve the situation and may actually make things worse.”

Robinson shouldn't have thought about it; he was correct to begin with.

I can attest to the fact that the “overload” criticism does make sense.

Been there, done that, learned from the mistake.

As a systems engineer with considerable experience in the design and development of large systems, it’s taken as gospel that you don’t tackle big problems all at once. You break them into smaller, more manageable systems and work them one at a time. It used to be called “build a little, test a little;” the current phrase du jour is “spiral development.”

Today, a “laserlike focus on the financial crisis, to the exclusion of everything else” is exactly the right approach. Why? Here’s an analogy: one doesn’t build a high-rise by constructing and occupying the 17th floor first -- without a foundation, keeping it airborne is tricky.

And the foundation for today’s problems is the financial and banking system. Fix it, and the rest of America’s problems become manageable. Don’t and, well, that 17th floor isn’t going to stay hanging in the sky for very long.

Robinson again:

Here's the real question: Do we throw all that money into the apparently bottomless pit of Wall Street's irresponsibility and greed? Or do we spend some of it on initiatives that will make the American people healthier, better educated and less dependent on foreign oil -- and that, in the long run, should make us all more prosperous?

Ignoring the ad hominem attack on “Wall Street’s irresponsibility and greed,” here’s the real question: Do we continue to put our children and grandchildren deeper and deeper in debt in a vain hope that Government irresponsibility will compensate for our own? Or do we step up, act responsibly and individually to fix what ails and move on?