While the Washington establishment hyperventilates over those AIG bonuses, with the president taking time to flay donors and recipients; and while Congress nervously sidles up to the multi-trillion-dollar Obama budget; yes, and while the Democrats roll out a new attack strategy to cope with the Republicans' somewhat older attack strategy … hit pause.

A cloud of smoke overhangs the battlefield. A peek above the cloud would seem more than warranted. What is the meaning of all this? Any number of answers seem feasible. Here is mine:

"All this" is about reminding us what life would be like -- what, in less fortunate countries it is already about -- when government becomes the center of attention, the nexus, the Answer!!

A government easily smaller than the one the current administration idealizes can't get its act together, can't keep the windshield clear, all the instruments in working order.

Life is too big for government to oversee. Such is the message. Such is the truth, however hard it may be to glimpse at a moment like the present one. Two months into the Obama tenure, a sinking feeling is appropriate enough. Yet I feel a curious exhilaration. Knowledge expands. Governments aren't as smart as they think they are, as we're re-learning. To the extent we'd forgotten what we knew back when Ronald ("government is not the solution; government is the problem") Reagan entered the White House.

Pore over the public prints, and you're challenged to find anyone who is certain the federal government knows what it is doing at the moment. That would be because Washington clearly doesn't know what it's doing -- except to the extent it knows the necessity of reading constituent opinions and vowing to give effect to those opinions. Essentially that's what President Obama intended Monday when he promised to see about getting the AIG bonuses canceled. Continued...