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.

Matt Taibbi

Mr. Madoff, who is serving a 150-year sentence, seemed frail and a bit agitated compared with the stoic calm he maintained before his incarceration in 2009, perhaps burdened by sadness over the suicide of his son Mark in December…

Few of us were born yet and those who were, octogenarians today, were too young to be listening, but the thunderclap from those words still resounds today. The man speaking was accepting his party's nomination for the presidency, a candidacy that all but meant his election given the dire condition of the country as he spoke. What was needed, he said, was "a new deal for the American people."

I watched some PBS programming the other night which was all focused on Haiti and the crisis that continues there.  Highlighted were the suffering and anguish of people and those who wanted to see and work towards a new and better reality.  NGO's, concerned nationals,  a commited police chief and UN officials were all present working on the details of that country's future.  All of that comittment yet the challenges before them seemed insurmountable.  My mind wandered and I thought, are the "solutions" being applied workable?  Is the problem very simple or a splintered array that must need time being considered even as more problems spring up because of natural progression?  Is the right approach being concieved of or are we stuck in the 20th century logistics that did not conquer our greatest challenges? 

As someone who has worked for a legislature I can tell you that the provenance of ideas--who is proposing them, who is for them and against them, and how powerful are those forces--has an enormous amount to do with how, and whether, they are even seriously considered by legislators.

We as humans don't do Big very well and it seems that current and past research bares this out.  This article presents a few of the reasons why this is true.