Elections happen very quickly when they come, but they are not won, or indeed lost, simply in the moment of voting. Winning and losing elections is the business of the space between elections. We are in such a space now; and if we are not careful, the business we are now in will prove to be the business of losing.

            In last week’s State of the Union Address, President Obama replayed themes he had touched on here in North Carolina when speaking at Forsyth Technical College in December.[1] He spoke of competitive challenges and the danger of a loss of global leadership.

“When you are in Washington, remember what the voters back home want – less government and more freedom”[1]

(Jim DeMint, welcoming tea-party backed victors in the 2010 mid-term elections)

This is no ordinary day in American politics. This is the day power officially shifted in the House of Representatives from Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats to John Boehner’s Republicans. This is the day the inmates retook the asylum.

The community college in my small North Carolinian city received a  presidential visit on Monday. The President came, spoke and left, in a visit that would have been only locally newsworthy but for the importance of what he said. Barack Obama came to Winston-Salem to celebrate America’s community colleges and to stress their importance in the re-energizing of the American economy. In a characteristically long and carefully constructed speech, the President made the case for greater spending on both education and research as the way to avoid U.S.