[DanielBMarkham]

Political organizations exist for political reasons.

So if you get elected to "do something" about orphans, you'll create an organization to do something. The goal of this organization is political: appear to be making progress on the orphan problem. At the very least, do not appear in the news as an example of government waste.

The current website problem is a political failure -- it looks bad. But that's just a short term consideration. The long-term bet is that over the next decades, the ACA will bring great political benefit to the political party that supported it, no matter what other things it does.

So when we evaluate projects created by political organizations for political reasons, the success criteria is much different than commercial or non-profit projects. I don't think this is a failure. Maybe a bump in the road, but it's nothing that won't work itself out over the next year or so. (And be long forgotten)

Remember, a lot of government contractors made money building these sites. A lot of people had jobs. A lot of committees and functionaries are able to add this to their list of good they've done in the world. Not being able to actually use the site for a while is a small pittance compared to the real, measured benefit the sites have created. So far. If it drags on for a long time, the political math could switch around the other way, but I doubt it.

[001sky]

The problem with this logic is that carte balche on an amex is no way to run a government, even if every dime spent is sucessful in "keeping you in power". To the extent that one is rationalizing the status quo, it is pointing out the obvious. Unfortunately, the math no longer works and the system is going to be reset as someone else has to pick up the tab. It may be republicans or it may be your children. But whomever gets stuck with the bills is going to be pissed off, methinks. Part of being a successful politician is not creating deep-seated enenimities.

[DanielBMarkham]

When the U.S. was founded, slavery was a key concern. Jefferson and others knew that slavery couldn't last, but there was no way to get agreement on it.

So what did they do? They left the problem to future generations to solve. And the result involved a lot of bloodshed.

In any system of government, there's always going to be a strong desire to kick problems down the road for somebody else to solve. I think the best we can hope for is some structures in place to minimize this, but you'll never get rid of it completely.

What we see now is just 250 years or so of this thinking, with the default solution of letting somebody else handle it growing more powerful with each passing year.

[001sky]

So this will be solved when we get a hybrid of Abe Lincoln and Steve Jobs elected president =D ie, someone who see's the big picture and has the discipline to bring a product to market that doesn't suck. I think being an optimist is looking at your problems and facing them down. Aknowledging things are hard only adds to the glory of overcoming the odds.