It’s possible that, after he plowed his ship into an iceberg, Captain Edward John Smith of the RMS Titanic paused to worry if he’d remembered to unplug the coffee maker. But it’s not likely.
Smith, after all, had real problems. His ship was sinking, and that probably absorbed most of his energy. 
Many would say the American economy has also hit an iceberg. It’s purportedly sinking under a mountain of bad debts and soaring unemployment. As a new president takes charge, one would expect him to focus exclusively on righting the ship.
Not quite. Oh sure, Barack Obama mentioned the economy in his inaugural address, and sure, he intends to spend hundreds of billions, maybe even a trillion dollars, to “stimulate” it. But the new president’s mind seemed to be elsewhere. He apparently wanted to focus on bigger, longer-term problems.
“Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age,” Obama announced. Sounds as if he -- or at least his speechwriter -- has been reading Andrew Bacevich.
In his new book “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism,” Bacevich takes Americans to task for our lifestyle choices. The author is a professor at Boston University and a retired Army colonel, and the book aims to explain America’s foreign policy failures in recent decades.
Bacevich points the finger at domestic economics. Our desire to buy bigger things, better things and ever-more things, he writes, is bringing the country to ruin. It forces us to borrow (from China) trillions of dollars we might never be able to pay back and to be involved militarily in a region (the Middle East) we’d be better off avoiding.
There’s a case to be made here. Most Americans could stand to lose a few pounds around the waistline and a few pounds of electronic gadgets around the house.
Bacevich’s proposed solution, however, seems less sweeping than his stated problem. To save itself, he writes, the U.S. should focus on twin goals: getting rid of nuclear weapons and battling global warming.
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