In 1994 Clinton lost Congress. He lost it in large part because of NAFTA, failing at health care reform and the the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell fiasco. Democratic base voters stayed home and Republicans were motivated. Doing “moderate” things didn’t make Republicans not vote against Democrats, but it did make Democrats not vote Democrats.

No, you have a different attitude towards waste than I do. Waste is good, important. Especially in art. It’s not the perfectly placed and chosen object that rules. It’s a pile of things and one might catch your eye but its always in context. We need too much. As long as we have hands and bodies.

Our war in the border regions is being fought by drone assassinations. A man at the control sits in front of a screen in Las Vegas, and fires when he has a certain shot. To a primitive mind (but not only to a primitive mind), this experiment on a country not our own has the trappings a video game played in hell. But the procedure was here embraced by the president in the antiseptic idiom of a practiced technocrat. He gave no sign of the effects of such killings by a foreign power out of reach in the sky. To assassinate one major operative, Baitullah Mehsud, as Jane Mayer showed in a recent article in the New Yorker, 16 strikes were necessary, over 14 months, killing a total of as many as 538 persons, of whom 200-300 were bystanders. What comes of the reputation of policemen in a crime-ridden neighborhood when they conduct themselves like that? And what makes anyone suppose the reaction will be less extreme when the policeman comes from another country? And yet, from the president’s West Point speech, one would not guess that he has reflected what our mere presence in West Asia does to increase the enchantment of violent resistance and to heat the anger that turns into terrorists people who have lost parents, children, cousins, clansmen, and friends to the Americans. The total number of Muslims killed by Americans in revenge for the attacks of September 11th now numbers more than a hundred thousand. Of those, few were members of Al Qaeda, and few harbored any intention, for good or ill, toward the United States before we crossed the ocean as an occupying power.

The country is ill served by a president who fails to meet his responsibility for the rigorous, open debate on matters of great consequence that he pledged and that is imperative for avoiding more dismal failure. What is the value of a 150 I.Q. when bereft of wisdom or conviction to guide it? Obama’s audacity in pursuing his ambition is one thing; political and intellectual courage is quite another.

First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn’t hear of it, and Republicans and “centrists” thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada — which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)

So the compromise was to give all Americans the option of buying into a “Medicare-like plan” that competed with private insurers. Who could be against freedom of choice? Fully 70 percent of Americans polled supported the idea. Open to all Americans, such a plan would have the scale and authority to negotiate low prices with drug companies and other providers, and force private insurers to provide better service at lower costs. But private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn’t hear of it, and Republicans and “centrists” thought it would end up too much like what they have up in Canada.

Before being shipped out to Britain’s distant dominion, many of the children were told their parents were dead, and that a more abundant life awaited them in Australia.

Most were deported without the consent of their parents, and commonly, mothers and fathers were led to believe that their children had been adopted somewhere in Britain.

On arrival in Australia, the policy was to separate brothers and sisters.

And many of the young children ended up in what felt like labour camps, where they were physically, psychologically and often sexually abused.

If next time some Republican politician rails against subsidies for the arts, using this NuMU “brouhaha” as an example of how taxpayer money is wasted, how will we be able to counter that? I’m curious to especially hear from those people - Regina Hackett comes to mind - who think opposing the NuMu show makes you a member of the “purity police”.

However much Powhida the character flails in his anxious ambition, Powhida the maker stays well grounded in art historical tradition. He is a social satirist in the manner of Daumier and Hogarth, up-to-date, up-to-speed, up to some pretty cutting commentary.

The party that really has something to answer for is the New Museum. Inaugurated as an upstart venture with aims to realign the art world’s chi (or at least disintegrate a bit of its ossified power), 30 years later, it is following the standard template: anointing white, male, European artists in an attempt to build a reciprocally beneficial art history. And, more importantly, doing the reciprocity thing with benefactors like Dakis Joannou, a major Fischer collector and museum trustee who is also showing his collection at the New Museum (curated by Koons, to close the circle) next February.