"But even if Obama fails, there is an art to losing, too -- in a way that can tee up the issue for future presidents."

"An art to losing." If your art is losing doesn't that just make you a "bum?" I want to write more but I can't get past this movie scene. I'm sorry. I'm no Dickday. But for the record I am not a bum. This is a conversation I want to have with the Democratic Party: It was you Charlie.

Well maybe I can say a little more.

My cat knows when her bowl is empty and she knows what to do about it. What I wouldn't give for just a moment of that kind of clarity.

Does the farmer sit on the edge of his field and mull interminably whether to plant wheat or corn, beans or squashes, food or fodder? Does the fisherman sail out upon the ocean only to drop anchor and meditate on the vast largess of the sea and never drop his net? Does the hunter sit quietly with his weapon in his lap and marvel at the variety of fauna that surrounds him in the forest? No. The farmer farms and the fisherman fishes and the hunter hunts. He does so because his bowl is empty and he knows what to do about it.

Lately the marvelous Mr. Dickday has been quoting Lao Tzu as a way to launch discussion of some current affairs. Big Zu, as I affectionately call him, is hard for the Western mind to understand. We read him as we would read Socrates but while they were almost contemporaries they had a much different approach to wisdom and understanding. Socrates admitted himself that he had no ideas and that his only intent was to be a "gadfly" who stimulates ideas in others. In the end he hoped to engender some body of wisdom unknown even to him. Big Zu was all about a body of knowledge which he summarized with the title The Tao, The Way. "He who knows the Tao does not speak the Tao and he who speaks the Tao does not know the Tao." How could these two men be more different?

This difference reminds me of my youthful considerations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Each man appealed to me but for entirely different reasons. I so admired the rigorous rationality and manly firmness of Malcolm. Martin was less appealing to a callow youth but the spiritual power of his "way" was undeniable. In the end it turned out that in the morning, when you are buttoning your shirt and thinking about the demonstration that you are about to take part in, the rigors of reason and the manly poise are unsustaining. Doubt and fear will invade and distract and dissuade. There is a need for clarity if this thing is to be done. Martin offered that clarity.

When my cat can sees the bottom of her bowl, she knows what to do. At first she comes to me with what I deem as affection which I return by petting her head. Determined as she is she continues these friendly gestures until I come to say to her "I love you too but I am busy thinking about something now so go away." She persists and eventually begins to speak, first quietly and then more firmly. And persist she does until I finally realize that she is not overcome with kind regard for me but rather she has seen the bottom of her bowl and she knows she must move me to answer her need. Finally I get it.

And in this way I am approaching my moment of clarity. I am beginning to see the bottom of the bowl. I know what to do. I will ask, I will insist, I will demand that those who hold the scepter of authority respond to my need and if they refuse then I no longer have any use for the relationship. I will plow other fields, fish other waters, hunt other forests and forget them and all their disputations.