Adam Serwer profiles NAACP president Ben Jealous and considers the contemporary relevance of the advocacy organization:
The NAACP had only recently decided that Jealous was the man -- er, person -- who could hold it together. On the eve of its centennial year, the organization risks becoming a victim of its own success. The leader of the Western world is a black man named Barack Obama, and even Bill Cosby sounds optimistic about the future of black America. The organization that publicized lynching and awakened the conscience of the nation, litigated against segregation all over the country, and helped organize the 1964 March on Washington now finds itself suffering from dwindling membership and an inability to connect to youth.
Paul Starr looks at conservatism's connection to the present crisis:
[R]eflexive, conservative ideology -- support for tax cuts, no matter the facts and circumstances; a preference for policies that favor the well-off; a bias against the use of public institutions and public regulation -- remains a powerful factor in national debate. So it's crucial, perhaps more for others than for Obama, to continue to press the case that our present problems have ideological roots -- that they are not due equally to all sides but rather to the mistaken premises, malignant neglect, and sometimes outright malfeasance of a long era of conservative government.
And Ezra Klein states that fiscal responsibility now means health reform:
[S]ince Medicaid and Medicare pay for health services on the private market, this can only be fixed through broader health reform…. it's no surprise that asked for details on today's fiscal summit, one senior administration official told me that "the most likely outcome at this point is that we focus on health care given that it's the key to our fiscal future." Another explained the focus starkly. "Health is mathematically bigger," he said.
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--The Editors
