Let me join this interesting discussion by picking up on Andrew Bacevich's point from Tuesday. I am not convinced we face a constitutional crisis, but I know we are in a political and economic crisis. A major contributor is a defense budget hyper-inflated during the Bush years (a subject dear to Eugene's heart), from $280 billion in fiscal year 2000 to $542 billion in 2009, plus $860 billion spent thus far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the wars will cost us $2.4 trillion before they are over.

The budgets are justified by an expansionist foreign policy and approved by a Congress more concerned with defending their political positions than with sound policy. We need a dramatic change in course. But the next president, as Andrew points out, will face formidable resistance. There will be a struggle between the "transformationalists" and the "incrementalists." A case in point is Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' speech just yesterday defending the Cold War nuclear policies of the administration--with a few tweaks.

Here is what I mean. As soon as the next president wakes up from his election victory, he will face a contest between those who want to carry out his pledge to transform policy and those who will want to continue the current course with some adjustments. A "change" agenda from Senator Obama or Senator McCain will be met by old hands saying, "Welcome to the Department of Defense. This is how we do business here."

Gates is a good example. He is open to new ideas. He has had a recent speech decrying our obsession with expensive, high-tech weapons, taking direct aim at several gold-plated systems, including the $350 million-per-copy F-22 fighter jet. He may be open to negotiations with Iran, even, apparently, the Taliban. But when it comes to the single most dangerous threat to America--a nuclear strike by another nation or a terrorist group--Gates is stuck in cold war thinking.

At the Carnegie Endowment on Tuesday, he tacked towards new negotiations to reduce nuclear weapons that both candidates favor, but then tacked on demands for developing new weapons. This will be the strategy of those who want to stay the course: superficially embrace the new president's agenda while still actively pursuing their own.

In this case, it is Gates repeating false claims that our weapons are aging and must be replaced with newly developed bombs. Wrong. Every independent study has shown that our nuclear weapons are basically immortal. They can last for generations with proper care. He seems to support ratifying the nuclear test ban that has been before the Senate for ten years, but only if he gets new weapons.

Several commentators have favored keeping Gates on as defense secretary in the next administration. There is some sense to this. But his views on nuclear policy should disqualify him from such consideration. We need our top officials to be thinking in new ways, looking to transform policy, not stay the course.

Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has called for a 25% reduction in the defense budget. We can do this without any decrease in our national security and it will be necessary to do so as part of any real economic rescue plan. But even talking about it will provoke howls of protest from those benefiting from the stream of contracts pouring out of the Pentagon and the ideologues tied to them.

Here is where Eugene's core message is so important. The change will not come fundamentally from the officials appointed by the new president but from a vibrant, informed and engaged civil society demanding that the new administration give the country the policies and budget priorities they deserve.

There is a new movement in our country today. The election should not be the end of this progressive wave, but the beginning.