Cyreenik Says
Now that the Tempest in a Tea Party Pot government shutdown has passed on, we get to see the ACA Web Site Start Fiasco in all its fine glory. The jaw dropper here is that these designers had three years to get ready for this: Three years! And they have bobbled the start like they were high schoolers in a computer class. This 24 Oct 13 WSJ editorial, ObamaCare Takes On Water It's not just a buggy web site, it's a disaster of Titanic proportions by Peggy Noonan, is describing how badly this is turning out both technically and as PR for Obamacare.
This web site launch is a wonderful example of a "Brat Project" (my term). A Brat project is one that top management gets enthusiastic about, and majestically says, "Make it so." to the underlings. But there is considerable controversy about it, and implementing it is not straight forward. There is always a lot of idealistic enthusiasm underpinning the brat project -- this is going to save the world!
And this 26 Oct 13 Economist article, Computer Says No, details more of the brat nature. From the article, "Technology executives were amazed at the opaque development of healthcare.gov, led by CGI Federal, a contractor. In Silicon Valley software is tested and re-tested before it is launched. “Contrast that with, no one knows anything about how it’s going, then on the day of the launch you pray?” scoffs one tech executive." and this 2 Nov 13 article, Whoops, which goes into more detail.
A project turns into a brat when the controversy continues strongly and how to implement this great idea never becomes clear. As a result lots of people in the trenches get disappointed -- in their hearts they want the project to go away. But the top management won't let that happen... but they won't properly oversee it, either. Idealism is powering the support to keep it going, but not providing practical answers as to how to implement this project. The vagueness in implementing means the project will become a victim of Creeping Feature Creature -- also known as goals which become moving targets. And as the deadline approaches it gets ignored more and more because working with it is spiritually painful... very painful... and the worker bees would much rather spend their time on other productive and meaningful things that have clear goals and clear paths to reaching the goal. The deadline comes and... we have a disaster which is no surprise to the underlings, but catches the top management enthusiasts flat-footed.
A previous memorable introduction disaster/brat project was the 1988 launch of the Premier e-cigarette by RJR. The idealism behind this was that it would address the secondary smoke issue, and therefore anti-smokers would love it. From top managment point of view this was a great solution to that high profile problem of the era. But it turned into a brat -- a billion bucks and three years spent to develop the product and a factory, and it was withdrawn just months later because the implementation was totally wacky and nothing customers would pay money for.
The ACA web site may now have become an even more memorable Brat.
The big message from this current US government Shutdown/Debt Ceiling Crisis is that we Americans are still searching for our Next Big Goal (NBG). An NBG is something that a community can agree to back, so the attention and resources of the community are organized and accomplishing something. The community members can bicker about how to accomplish the goal and whether it's the most important thing to be concerned with, but while they are doing that arguing their actions support the NBG. The last two highly successful NBG's for America were defeating the Nazis in World War Two and containing the spread of Communism during the Cold War.
The World War Two NBG brought America out of the decade of bickering that was the Great Depression. The growing Nazi threat allowed the Roosevelt administration, American business, and other advocacy groups to put aside their differences long enough to make America first an "Arsenal for Democracy" and then an effective participant in the war. Growing Productivity became the center of American business and social attention rather than dozens of kinds of rights and fairnesses.
The Cold War allowed the unity to continue, and the result was fending off the next Great Recession/Depression for seventy years -- America prospered mightily because it stayed focused on a unifying goal.
Sadly, Bush Jr. and his NBG, the War on Terror, could not maintain the focus. And while I praised Obama when he was first elected for his efforts to move us beyond the War on Terror, he and his administration clearly haven't succeeded at creating the NBG for 2010's America.
This ability to build an NBG is why Reagan is remembered so fondly.
This is what Obama, and the Republicans, and everyone else in America, need to be searching for. More than anything, we need our Next Big Goal that will allow us to put aside all this smaller penny-ante bickering and cheap shotting.
This isn't an easy task. And it can easily go wrong. Hitler and Stalin were providing the NBG's for Germany and Russia. But it is vital if we are to keep out of Great Depression Era-style bickering and time- and attention-wasting.
I wrote about Syria in August, pointing out that this was now a classic proxy war -- there are now many people besides Syrians both fighting and paying for the fighting.
One more idea has come to me: This war now bears resemblance to the Spanish Civil War of 1936. That was also a proxy war. What makes them similar is that a lot of idealists from other countries have come to participate in this... epic struggle? In the Spanish Civil War a lot of leftist intellectuals formed the International Brigades which fought on the government's side against Franco and the Fascists -- Ernest Hemingway being one example.
The western press I'm reading doesn't talk much about this intellectual aspect of the Syrian conflict, but I wonder if it isn't alive and well and a strong element in what's going on there? This 28 Sep 13 Economist article, Their own men: Islamist rebels sever ties with the political opposition, talks about how many groups are now involved and how difficult it has become for them to cooperate with each other -- the warriors have stopped talking with the politicians. And this 28 Sep 13 Economist article, The New Face of Terror, talks about the growing terrorist threat, but not about any intellectual foment or transformation that may be accompanying these jihadist movements. This aspect is something historians and Islamist writers of twenty years from now may tell us about in what will become famous ways.
Update: This 7 Oct 13 WSJ editorial, Reuel Marc Gerecht: The Next Breeding Ground for Global Jihad, talks about this cultural aspect of the Syrian Civil War.
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