What's going to be out in front of the fan when the s*#t hits

What the heck. In the last sane moments before election coverage really heat's up, let's use one of those cool tools the time management seminar industry is so fond of--the 2 x 2 importance-urgency matrix so scope out the agenda of the next administration. One axis is (duh) the importance of an issue--how much of an impact does it have--and the other its urgency--how quickly it should be addressed. In terms of presidential-grade issues, importance is divided between "absolutely critical" and "pretty damned important" and the urgency between "yesterday or sooner" and "any other time". The absolutely minimalist array facing us looks something like

                                  Absolutely Critical          Pretty Damned Important

 

 Yesterday or sooner  COVID-19 pandemic           Back to school

                                  Economic restoration       Border control

                                  Black Lives Matter

 Any other time         Health care and finance     Statues

                                 Climate and environment

                                  Immigration policy 

The upper-left quadrant will require any new administration to change its heart, mind, and soul on at least one issue. Both sides really need to work out how to help restore the economy after a government-imposed shock. Unemployment remains at deep-recession levels even after several months of recovery. Income maintenance for those still out of work is drying up quickly, even in those cases where relief has been granted. Tens of thousands of layoffs have been planned and announced for the coming weeks.

Yes, both the public health and the private economy must recover for any real economic growth to resume in the long term. Right now, the policy classes seem to be content that in the long run, we are all dead, and in the short term, we are all broke. Whoever wins, come up with a better idea.

Black Lives Matter is the only leftish slogan that I can abide. It does have its flaws--it's divisive in structure and rhetoric. At least one leader has said explicitly that it means "anybody but white." But those who snarl back "all lives matter, [expletive]" have to think it through enough to recognize that as of this minute, black lives are not treated as mattering as much as, well let's say mine. What we need to find is not a way to make my life matter less, I'm opposed to that on principle and in practice, but to make sure every life enjoys the mattering, as modest as it has been, that my life has.

Time expires. I'll try to deal with some of the less important and less urgent issues after the dust settles.