Tipping Point

As New Year beginnings go, this one has an especially odd, mixed feel.
President Ford’s funeral-beginning stately in the District of Columbia and ending solemnly in Grand Rapids, Mich., was sad and touching. The gathering of Republicans and Democrats to honor Ford is probably as close as the two warring parties will get as the latter faction takes charge of Congress for the first time in a dozen years and dares the veto pen of a weakened Republican president.
All the while cherry blossoms are blooming early in the nation’s capital due to unseasonably mild weather. But don’t read anything metaphorically into that, irrespective of Democratic and Republican calls for bipartisanship in the 110th Congress. It ended before the Democrats’ 100-hour legislative surge began. The political temperature remains frosty as ever. Democrats, brought into power in the November midterm elections, promise to clean up the ways and means of politicking. The Great Promiser is Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the first ever female House speaker.
But who believes the power shift-the result of a democratic process and driven by humans with inherently political motivations-will mean great change? It’s much too much to expect, much less promise. Put another way, anticipated Democratic telecom reform legislation-the likely vehicle again for the wireless industry’s federal pre-emption campaign-is likely to be more controversial than the forlorn GOP version and thus undoable in 2007. Likewise, another disciple of the Michael Scott School of Management-the Federal Communications Commission-will be hard pressed to top its stellar handling of AT&T Inc.’s $79 billion acquisition of BellSouth Corp. But don’t count out these overachievers.
In contrast, while policy-makers continue to re-gift the sordid status quo, technology continues to exhibit its uncanny, uninhibited ability to disrupt and convulse all things human and political.
Imagine a grisly cellphone video seen worldwide via the Internet being responsible for sealing the fate of war-torn Iraq. Everything can change in a Baghdad minute. Indeed, what powerful agents of change we hold in the palms of our hands.