I loved the stats Nate Silver put out during the election and have much the same feeling about Nate that this Daily Dish reader describes:

It’s a little bit of geek chic, I guess. I particularly love him for how awkward he can be in interviews–the nervous peal of laughter when he can’t match the emotional beats of the host, and then the borderline asbergian intensity when he starts wonking away. Man, I could watch Nate wonk it all night long.

I wonder, as the world tilts along the autism spectrum, how long will it take for this to be a more commonly held view. Here is a reader actually appreciating Nate for his social awkwardness!

I spoke with my sisters this morning and Gabriella told me that David Brooks had been pontificating on one of the networks last night. It sounded like he’d been spreading a message much like one of his recent columns for the NYTimes.

In the next few years, the nation’s wealth will either stagnate or shrink. The fiscal squeeze will grow severe. There will be fiercer struggles over scarce resources, starker divisions along factional lines. The challenge for the next president will be to cushion the pain of the current recession while at the same time trying to build a solid fiscal foundation so the country can thrive at some point in the future.

We’re probably entering a period, in other words, in which smart young liberals meet a stone-cold scarcity that they do not seem to recognize or have a plan for.

So? I asked. Where does he get his history? I asked G what the biggest shift in government’s role of the past century had been. She suggested the New Deal. I agree. And when was the New Deal dealt?

At that moment the nation was severely constrained. FDR came to office facing a huge crisis and a “stone-cold scarcity” if ever there was one. But one of my mantras is that creativity is born of constraints. The very constraints that faced FDR, that face us today, may help bring forth the creative approaches to government and our problems that we need.

Let me back up a bit and explain this “creativity is born of constraint” idea.

When I was in college I spent a lot of time printing at the Pierson Press. This was a letterpress shop in an old converted racquet ball court. There I learned to set lead type by hand, picking one letter at a time out of the upper or lower cases, lock it into forms, and roll the paper across it. I loved letterpress printing, the bite of paper, the impression of type on a page, the mixing of ink, the fine control and endless possibilities, the excitement of breaking rules.

A couple years later the Mac arrived and my friend Kirk and I convinced the local Kinkos to get a few Macs one the LaserWriter and PageMaker arrived. Oh, man, endless fonts, no running out of letters, last minute changes to designs, mixing in drawings of all sorts, the flexibility and endless possibilities, the excitement of making the machine meet my imagination.

Years later I realized that I’d felt creatively freed in both situations. Each imposed severe restrictions on me. Letterpress was very unforgiving of error, setting type was difficult, the fonts and letters we had available were quite limited. Laser printing was limited by toner, black and white, only a few kinds of paper, and only a few sizes.

Yet it was within those boundaries that my creative expression was allowed to flourish. The excitement was in pressing against the edges, in feeling the tension of medium and imagination, of getting to know the tools well enough to make them work for me. I began to recognize that art was often fundamentally about this sort of artificially constrained play. We choose a medium, we immerse ourselves in it, get dirty with it, and see how we can make it serve our dreams. Most recently for me this has been a lesson I relearned with tile. The limitations of mosaic tile are severe, not the least of them, I learned, is the time it takes. When doing a job for my mom recently, I found that by embracing my extremely short timeline I opened a whole new approach to the problem that I really enjoyed.

Today I realized that this lesson, that creativity is born of constraints, applies to politics and our national endeavor as well as it does to art.

We are entering a constrained moment. In that I agree with Brooks. But where he sees scarcity, division, and struggle, I see creativity, compromise, and beautiful potential. It is at these moments where we seem most bound that we are most likely to make a leap together.

Think about it this way: When can you get people in a neighborhood together for a meeting? On a sunny day when all is well folks see endless possibilities around them, the go out for walks, they go on vacation, they go to the movies. But what if the day is drippy or the cars on the streets have all had their mirrors smashed? It is a lot easier to get people together when they are bound by some common constraints of weather or circumstance or whatever it may be. Our financial system meltdown is such a common constraint.

I believe Barack Obama will be the kind of leader we need to call us together for that national conversation. He will be pressing for the creative solutions, engaging dynamic minds, respecting the input of science. What now? Now we make the fullest possible use of the awesome constraints we have been given at this juncture in our nation’s history to rebuild our government it ways that it can serve us and our children in the coming century. There are few more exciting times to be engaged in such a call than when the environment conspires to put everybody in the same room, at the same meeting, looking for a way to break the rules, to make media meet imagination and carry us forward.

That is our next step.

Mary and I voted last week so we could be out volunteering tomorrow for Barack and change. But we didn’t quite appreciate how important voting would feel this year. As we left Mary was sad we had not brought a camera to take a picture of our ballot. I was sad when we got home that we had not brought the kids along to witness to history. I think people are going to really want to be part of this moment. They are going to turn out like never before. Tomorrow, everyone can have a hand in a real historical moment. Who is going to miss that?

Obama may have some ideas about reorganizing government to be more visible to the rest of us and more responsive to our priorities, but he won’t be alone!

Techpresident today points to an effort by Jim Gilliam to jump-start some prioritization by “we the people.”

So, why not go to whitehouse2.org and give it a try! My priorities start with universal, single payer healthcare. I believe the rise in costs driven by insurance companies that long ago forgot how to do their real job is eating away at the foundations of this country. I’ll put that number one. What will you list as your top priority?

My favorite architect is, of course, the one we hired! John was just breaking away to start his own firm, Shelter Architecture, when we hired him to design our third floor “subtraction” for our house. My study at home is part of the space that was made alive by the light and air John added to our lives.

Today John was interviewed about a wonderful new house he just completed in Minneapolis. Once again, it looks like John really lived into the dreams of his clients, building a simple modern house that, it turns out, gets the highest possible LEED certification for sustainability. It is an outstanding house! Take a look for yourself.

The interview is well worth listening to, along with its slideshow. The priority on this house was less on fancy new energy technology than on solid foundations of materials along with a flexibility of internal infrastructure that leaves this house efficient today and ready to adopt even more efficient technology tomorrow. The slides are also fun because you’ll catch a glimpse of John!

Congratulations to John and the whole Shelter team. They must be doing well, I notice that they are moving into new space next month. Listen to the team talk about their commitment to “cause architecture.”

One of the things Mary and I thought long and hard about before getting married was that we would be taking part in an institution that was barred from some of our best friends. In the end, we turned our vows into a prayer for all those sharing the ceremony with us, so that they could pledge themselves to one another with us. It was an important moment in my life.

These past few years I have loved seeing the institution of marriage break open to the love all around us. Massachusetts, California, and Connecticut are leading the way. I hope all of us can learn to fear less and love more.

Of course, this change is not without opposition. In California there is now a proposition to amend the state constitution so that gay marriages would be banned once more. To support gay marriage you have to oppose this proposition (a bit confusing). I am “NO” on Prop 8. Today Apple also came out as NO, calling this a civil rights issue, not a gay rights issue.

Andrew Sullivan, a consistent NO voice on Prop 8 today shared a few nice ads that mingle the Apple design sense with the NO message. Here’s my favorite of the bunch.

If you live in California, please vote NO on Prop 8. If you live anywhere else, please consider supporting the No on Prop 8 effort. The NO vote has been eroding. They, WE, need your help.

A nice collection of practical wisdom from home office inhabitants at A List Apart today.

This is me:

Use Grand Central. Grand Central is an application that masks several phone numbers as one. You input all your phone numbers and label them “home,” “mobile,” “work,” etc. The application gives you one phone number, local to your area code, that you can hand out. It’s fantastic for having one phone number and being on the road, at home, at my external office, at the coffee shop, etc.

Too bad Grand Central has not been creating new accounts for over six months now. I hope they get back in the swing of things soon.

This is not me:

Get paid. Run your business like a law firm. I use FreshBooks and Backpack. I run a journal on my daily activities. I schedule what I am working on and when I am working on it. I bill for everything (phone calls, meetings, sketching ideas). I also know how many hours I need to meet my financial goals each month, each week, each day.

OK, I get paid, but I’m not this methodical about it!

This article is a sort-of companion to a piece earlier this summer about working from home.

Another Google 20% project rears its head. Moderator could help a group of people (say, public at a school board meeting) select the best questions to present. A nifty idea, and an interesting expression of faith in the wisdom of crowds. Still, I wonder how many people at the school board meeting have a computer, and of those that do, who has an internet connection?

Andrew pointed to this clear and readable parsing of the financial crisis today. Jim Manzi writes about the situation leading up to last week and the choices before us this week. “The problem we face is often described as mind-bendingly complex, but in its essentials, it is simple.”

The end state that we want to get to is pretty clear.

The price of the average home in America has fallen a lot, and is likely to fall further (although there will be huge regional differences). Some very over-leveraged homeowners are going to declare bankruptcy. Others are going to sell the boat and eat out less in order to avoid this. We need prices to mark to market (which they will eventually do anyway), as rapidly as possible consistent with not causing a depression caused by a collapse of consumer activity.

Many financial institutions have both profitable commercial businesses, and financial instruments that are wildly unprofitable, housed under one roof. We want the executives of these companies to lose their jobs, and the shareholders and bondholders in them to lose their money, while preserving the productive parts of the businesses and preventing a depression caused by a collapse of credit.

I can buy this desired end state. I’d put special stress on that “lose their jobs” and “lose their money” bit about executives and shareholders.

But I’m afraid that what we are actually planning is a way for these folks not to lose their shirts (and pants and socks and shoes). We have watched compensation for certain work spiral out the stratosphere this past decade. This broadening gap between rich and reasonable is clearly, in retrospect, an indicator of theft. The rich, with few exceptions, stole the future from the middle class and poor.

Are we going to make sure they get away with it? It sure feels like we are. Luckily there are some voices of conscience and sanity among our leaders. Check out the recent press release by Bernie Sanders (thanks, Daily Kos):

The people who can best afford to pay and the people who have benefited most from Bush’s economic policies are the people who should provide the funds for the bailout. It would be immoral to ask the middle class, the people whose standard of living has declined under Bush, to pay for this bailout while the rich, once again, avoid their responsibilities. Further, if the government is going to save companies from bankruptcy, the taxpayers of this country should be rewarded for assuming the risk by sharing in the gains that result from this government bailout.

Specifically, to pay for the bailout, which is estimated to cost up to $1 trillion, the government should:

a) Impose a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers. That would raise more than $300 billion in revenue;

b) Ensure that assets purchased from banks are realistically discounted so companies are not rewarded for their risky behavior and taxpayers can recover the amount they paid for them; and

c) Require that taxpayers receive equity stakes in the bailed-out companies so that the assumption of risk is rewarded when companies’ stock goes up.

I love these ideas, but note that there may be many fewer of the wealthy he proposes to tax given this crisis, so we should probably be looking for ways to return some of their haul to federal coffers (some way to tax savings or equity of the super-rich?). Sanders also suggests an employment program, re-regulation, and the breakup of companies that are “too big to fail.”

Yes!

An email exchange got me rolling this morning and I thought I’d share it here. It started when Mary quoted the Wikipedia to illuminate Barak Obama’s community organizing accomplishments.

After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer for three years from June 1985 to May 1988 as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale) on Chicago’s far South Side.[12][14] During his three years as the DCP’s director, its staff grew from 1 to 13 and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants’ rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.[15]

Her respondent replied…

Thank you for your response by sending the info from Wikipedia. I will make an attempt to look into it. As you know, Wikipedia, is kind of a community organized “encyclopedia” is not the last word on anything because anybody who reads it can make changes in its content. There is no final word in Wikipedia. I’m sure that you have other more reliable sources that you could send me. In the meantime I will assume that what you sent me is accurate.

As far as your other remark about “executive experience” is concerned, perhaps we should have an understanding of the definition of terms. An executive is someone who makes decisions and is ultimately responsible for those decisions which effect numerous people. The ultimate executive in the country is the president; in a state is the governor; in a city is the mayor. Every executive has a sign on his desk, whether he or she likes it or not, THE BUCK STOPS HERE. Obama has not had that kind of experience yet. Obama has a public voting record of what he did as a state senator. We all know how he voted on 130 occasions. An executive does not have that luxury.

The commander of a large air wing does have to make executive decisions on a daily basis.

Actually, I’d suggest that the Wikipedia is one of the most reliable sources you can reference. It is well “policed” by it’s community and has strict rules on citation. Especially controversial articles, like the Obama article, get especially good attention.

The passage Mary quoted includes citations for all its facts from Who’s Who in America, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the New Republic, the Boston Globe, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, to name just a few. You are welcome to indulge in “data free research” (as my mom calls it) to form your opinions, but if you want a bit of data, the Wikipedia is not a bad place to start, as long as you don’t allow it to become your exclusive source.

As to executive ability: I’d agree, the good executives have a sign like “the buck stops here” on there desks. The better execs even mean it. But I’d say that one of the most “experienced” execs in the country would be George Bush, and he is anything but a buck-stops-here kind of guy. He’s more a blame-the-other-guy kind of executive. His excuses range from “poor intelligence” to “evil left wing media” and he wriggles out of any blame for any mistake. No decent exec is going to avoid making mistakes, but the best seek out strong insight into the reality of the situation around them and own their errors when they make them, adjusting strategy as required. “Experience” does not tell you much about how one will perform in an office like the presidency. Besides which, McCain has no more executive “experience” than Obama, so the point is rather moot. In fact, in the one executive role we can compare side by side, how they run their presidential campaigns, it is pretty clear that Obama is by far the more gifted executive.

I believe the more urgent point is which candidate is really willing to look at the world as it really is and find the best course for America in that world. The Bush administration has operated as though the lies it tells itself and us will become truth through repetition. Then they make decisions based on those lies which end up being incredibly wrong-headed. Fiction does not become truth through repetition. McCain seems happy to do the same, and his latest decision (Palin) is just more of the same. He can repeat as often as he like that she is qualified to be president, but you have to have pretty big blinders on to buy that fiction. If you like living in a fairy tale world where America is always number one and the rest of the world always bends to our will even if the message is being carried by a gifted hockey-mom who believes we are on a mission from God, by all means, vote McCain, he’s your man.

But if you think we need to adjust our world-view a bit, to consult real experts in foreign policy, to be nimble on our feet when dealing with real foreign power, ready to adjust strategy and consider alternatives, then you should be considering the qualities Obama has displayed during this long campaign and career. He is not afraid to face the real world, he is not afraid to draw the “best and brightest” around him, he is not even afraid to change is mind and choose the best path that presents itself at a given time. He will build a real “administration” not just a White House desperately managing a message. He will bring new blood to Washington that will help guide our government to a wiser course. He does not propose to do this alone, this campaign is not about him or McCain: it is about us and how ready we are to roll up our sleeves, face the real world, and work to change the course of our country.

We can start by facing facts, like those in the Wikipedia.