Anybody who’s ever taken care of a sick person knows that when the patient is sufficiently weakened all kinds of bad things happen at once. Bed sores, infection, pneumonia, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, blood chemistry imbalances. It’s like the whole system goes “tilt”.

While the world is not yet in that state — I hope — catastrophes can cascade with alarming rapidity. And misfortune will be no respecter of party lines. So even those who may be watching, aghast, at some foolishness, akin to someone trying to recover from a stall by pulling back the stick, the inescapable fact is that we are all in the same boat. Grappling for the controls in a crisis normally doesn’t work. What helps is trying to do the best you can at your job.

Military catastrophes are instructive because they often reveal many mini-victories or remarkable stories of survival within a larger negative situation. Sometimes one side puts up a good show headless, simply because the parts function better than the dysfunctional whole. Think about the Iraqi insurgency, for example.

However the Obama administration handles the crisis, and one hopes they handle it well, professionalism still has to be the watchword. I think it’s highly probable that the first months of 2009 will see a series of challenges and crises. The task will be to survive them all.