FDR and Lyndon Johnson told the nation that government could solve the people’s problems. Ronald Reagan said government wasn’t the solution, it was the problem. And now Barack Obama offers the contradictory conclusion that government is both the solution, and the problem. At the same time, he insists that only Washington can fix health care, create new jobs, or stop climate change. He also declares that Washington is broken, paralyzed by partisanship and special interests, hopelessly dysfunctional.

If the federal government is so inept, misguided and corrupt, wouldn’t that suggest we should rely less on Washington, not more? Before the president decides on a coherent path for national recovery, he should at least begin to articulate a coherent view as to whether the federal government is responsible for creating the mess we’re in-or our only hope for fixing it.

While dramatizing the against-the-odds rescue of a noble, harmonious alien society called the Na'vi, James Cameron's "Avatar" may also effectuate the rescue of a nasty, contentious alien society known as Hollywood -- or at least save Tinseltown's annual Oscar extravaganza from its long-term ratings slump.

The annual Academy Awards telecast used to be one of the big, unifying cultural events that most Americans shared and talked about -- like the Super Bowl, or presidential election night, or Christmas Eve. As recently as the 1990's, more than 40 million U.S. viewers -- according to The Nielsen Company -- watched the broadcast in whole or in part, and spoke the next day about the best and worst gowns, the dumbest acceptance speeches, and the biggest surprises in the major categories.

Beginning with the awards for the film year 2003, however, the ratings for Hollywood's big show took a sharp turn for the worse, dipping consistently below the 40 million figure (despite sharply increased population) and reaching an all-time low in 2008, according to Nielsen.

The problem wasn't the quality of the hosts or the clumsiness of the big musical numbers, but the year-after-year nature of the top nominated films, with deeply depressing, art-house fare ("Million Dollar Baby," "Crash") reliably crowding out more popular releases.

The infamous 2008 Oscar telecast experienced a crash all its own, with just 31.76 million viewers -- or barely one out of ten Americans, according to Nielsen. As The Hollywood Reporter observed, the collapse in the size of the audience had everything to do with the gloomy nature of the leading nominees, all of which scored high on "the depression meter. ... 'Atonement,' 'Michael Clayton,' 'Juno,' 'No Country for Old Men,' and 'There Will Be Blood' were the bedsheet-noose best picture nominees."

The ratings last year rebounded slightly, with the relatively upbeat "Slum Dog Millionaire" delivering some old-fashioned uplift with its reassuringly familiar poor-boy-makes-good and love-conquers-all messages, despite the exotic (and sometimes brutal) Mumbai, India, settings.

For this year's March 7 broadcast, however, industry insiders tell me they expect a spectacular increase in the size of the TV audience -- perhaps even surpassing the huge 1998 ratings that set a recent record: 55 million viewers, nearly twice the viewership for 2008, according to Nielsen.

Sure, Billy Crystal's sprightly humor helped attract the hordes who viewed the '98 spectacle -- but the big attraction was a very big movie: "Titanic," the ultimate winner of 11 Oscars and, at the time, the top grossing motion picture ever released. No wonder James Cameron proudly proclaimed himself "king of the world" while scooping up his gold baldie for Best Director.

Well, 2010 will witness the "Return of the King" (you should pardon the expression), with "Avatar" replacing "Titanic" as history's top money-maker and listed as a heavy favorite for numerous Academy Awards (particularly in the technical arena).

The Oscar telecast will get a huge boost from all the avid "Avatar" fanatics, many of whom have seen the movie over and over again. Popular favorite Sandra Bullock, odds-on favorite to win Best Actress (she's already won the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards and tied for the Critics Choice Awards) will draw additional viewers who made the heartwarming, faith-family-and-football saga "The Blind Side" one of last year's most successful surprises.

Ironically, the presence of such populist fare on any list of sure-thing nominees makes the much-ballyhooed reform of the Best Picture category largely unnecessary when it comes to insuring a successful telecast.

Instead of five nominees as in the past, this year the Academy selected 10 films as candidates for the top prize, hoping to guarantee at least a few popular box office winners to go along with the usual dark, despairing and little-seen indie offerings on the ever-popular theme of "Life Sucks." (Actually, Mel Brooks directed a 1991 film originally entitled "Life Sucks," later released as "Life Stinks," which won no Oscar nominations and garnered the worst box office returns of his long, distinguished career.)

The good side of doubling the number of nominees involves increasing the chances for worthy films to get additional recognition, like the superb animated Disney/Pixar release "Up," which was nominated for Best Picture.

There is, however, a downside to the expansion of the Best Picture category: By swelling the number of nominees, the Academy contributes to the ongoing fragmentation of our culture. In recent years, only a handful of ferociously committed film buffs (and professional critics) could claim to have seen all five of the top nominees, and with ten choices now for the top prize, the number of moviegoers to have seen them all -- or even able to talk about them all -- will shrink even further.

In a similar vein, the expansion of television into innumerable cable networks (way beyond the traditional big three broadcast operations) may have vastly expanded the number of worthy offerings, but greatly reduces the cultural impact of any one of them.

"Mad Men" or "The Sopranos" may be great, but can't compare to the ability of old shows like "I Love Lucy" or "Mash" or "The Cosby Show" to bring Americans together for a few moments of entertainment across all demographic divisions.

Because of "Avatar's" phenomenal popularity, it may look like this year's Oscar show will have recaptured that unifying potential; but once the Na'vi send the corporate invaders back to Earth and recede into movie history, the centrifugal force of too many choices and ever-multiplying niche audiences will kick in once more and dictate the further atomization of our civilization. Not even James Cameron can fight the long-term trend.

This column appeared originally as a CNN.com Opinion piece on February 2nd, 2010.

(Guest Blog by Diane Medved)

There are plenty of articles out there about Boomers in denial. OK, it's tough for me to admit I've been married a quarter-century. Supposedly after 25 years, you're eligible for your quarter-life-crisis. That's after 25 years of living.
I look at the people who are my children, and feel like they ought to be my peers; their friends and I should be jumping in the car to go shopping and to a movie, but what is this? They don't want me along. Somehow against my will I landed on the wrong side of the generation gap.

As January 27, our anniversary, approached, I told my husband to just ignore it. "It's an important milestone," he protested. "No," I insisted, "every day is our celebration. We don't need a big deal." It's such chutzpah to throw yourself a party, like everyone should fete you just for staying together.

So my hubby arrived home from his business trip this week to find our house decorated (partly by a dearest friend who snuck in on our anniversary day and strung streamers and balloons while I was at the gym, wildly embellished by me). I'd wrapped up my romantic gifts of two shirts and four pair of pajamas. (Now, he'd been asking for pajamas. I really meant it when I said I wanted to minimize the occasion.)

Our close friends asked us out to a dinner celebration; I demurred, saying my hubby had mentioned a private escape, but when Hubby suggested we accept, I caved. Yesterday it dawned on me: Surprise party.

Oh yes. All the pieces started falling into place. And sure enough, as we neared the restaurant--Indian food our hosting friends despise--I saw far too many familiar cars. As I walked in to the chorus of "Surprise!" and the smiles of all our friends, I felt both honored and exposed, because proud as I am of our 25 years married, the idea of being more than 25 years old myself seems impossible.

Misgivings dissipated amidst hugs and good wishes from friends I love, all of whom share a precious corner of my life. Their children have grown along with mine; living in proximity in our Jewish neighborhood, they have spent Shabbat afternoons in our home and shared graduations and birthdays and the dreary weather and snow days and heat spells. That so many years could have mounted is mystifying, but the depth of ecstacy in sharing them is undeniable.

We Boomers may never grow old; we may never admit our physical limits or open AARP solicitations, but we'll claim the friendships and recollections that sit like snapshot signposts of our satisfactions. As my rabbi frequently reminds us, there's no word in Hebrew for retirement; to admit to maturity could slow us down as we collect marathon t-shirts, earn added diplomas and take on major projects.

Thank you to all our friends for an unforgettable 25th Anniversary; to see my husband beaming with childlike glee at pulling off his surprise was almost as priceless as your presence, the context of our very blessed lives.

Diane's Blog

Why do huge Wall Street bonuses provoke so much more public indignation than similarly gigantic lottery jackpots?

At least financial tycoons can try to argue that their payoffs stem from their own wise decisions or productive hard work. But Powerball winners get rewarded for patently stupid behavior: wasting a few dollars (usually on a regular basis) on addictive games of chance with only the remotest possibility of success.

Moreover, when some lucky bozo collects on a swollen jackpot that’s accumulated in a state-sponsored lottery, it means that this particular treasure won’t be available to anyone else; when somebody wins, the other players all lose. But if a stock broker or investment banker gets a big bonus, that doesn’t mean that others won’t be similarly rewarded or that his clients or even his competitors will suffer. In fact, such rewards generally come in clusters, rather than in singular or exceptional instances.

Of course, much of the public outrage against Wall Street pay-offs stems from the idea that financial manipulators have stolen bailout money that rightly belongs to the taxpayers. But this argument ignores the fact that the most recent round of controversial bonuses involved firms that had already repaid their TARP funds with interest (like the notorious Goldman-Sachs),or else never took government dough in the first place.

By contrast, every big time lottery winner takes money directly from government coffers, so that the bigger prize packages mean even bigger losses for cash-strapped states. Of course, Powerball apologists will justify these payoffs as periodically necessary, in order to encourage the public to keep buying tickets. But by the same token, Wall Streets defenders can argue that monstrous bonuses help encourage bright, eager and talented young hotshots to keep toiling tirelessly in the hopes of securing their own big score.

Whether or not the aspiring Gordon Gekkos ever reach their greed is good goals, it is tough to feel much sympathy for these privileged people. Financial industry tycoons usually boast the formidable advantages of Ivy League educations or family connections, while state jackpot winners often identify themselves as janitors or factory workers or even day laborers. America loves underdogs, so we rejoice at lottery triumphs while seething with resentment when pampered plutocrats collect even more money.

But the impoverished status of so many well-publicized mega-millions victors ought to make us less accepting of the lottery process, not more so. All studies of government-sponsored games of chance show that they draw their dollars disproportionately from the most disadvantaged members of society, as poor people demonstrate precisely the sort of habits and world views that keep them poor. Lottery losses of just five dollars a week (a common pattern in the nations poorest neighborhoods) could otherwise yield life-changing results (like a compound-interest portfolio that will likely exceed five figures within 20 years) if that money were saved and invested. Well-publicized lotto millionaires promote the pernicious idea that financial deliverance comes from sheer, dumb luck rather than ceaseless work and conscientious self-discipline, thereby encouraging the dysfunctional values that undermine the chances of economic advancement.

We may feel a perverse sense of pity, and even superiority, over those who collect gargantuan checks from games of chance, and we can take secret delight in reading the harrowing tales of how they’ve blown the money and shattered their lives. When it comes to Wall Streets perpetual winners, however, it’s all but inevitable to feel resentment, based on the strong suspicion that they’ve rigged the game in their own favor. Its nearly impossible to cheat at high profile lotteries, and most winners will succeed only once in a life-time, but the big champs of high finance seem to score again and again, decade after decade.

Their success may not harm others, and it’s true that wealth in the world doesn’t count as a zero sum game: the fact that Peter earns more doesn’t mean that there’s less wealth left over for Paul to pursue. Yet it still feels bitterly unfair to see that God (or nature, or destiny) hands out riches, talent and advantages so unevenly. At least a lotto game seems reassuringly random, by comparison.

Americans can accept a winner of Megamillions who collects $340 million simply because he’s luckier than we are, but we wince at the idea of bankers drawing a similar amount because they’re better connected, smarter, more sophisticated or even more productive. Such notions offend our egalitarian instincts, so we’re left with the anomalous situation of feeling more comfortable with fortunes based on blind, purposeless luck than we are with any concentration of wealth derived from planning or plotting, cooperation, conspiracy or competition.

President Obama and his Middle East Negotiator George Mitchell continue to press the Israelis for a total construction freeze on disputed territory claimed by Palestinians. The administration implicitly supports the Palestinian refusal to return to negotiations until such an unconditional freeze is in place. As Charles Krauthammer observes, the Palestinians negotiated for more than sixteen years, and even agreed to the Oslo Accords, with no Israeli commitment to stop building housing on contested territory like East Jerusalem.

The only reason that Palestinians now insist upon this unilateral gesture is that President Obama planted the idea, making any resumption of peace talks practically impossible. The Israelis will sit down without pre-conditions, but Obama's policy encourages Palestinians to refuse to participate until they preemptively receive one of the biggest concessions they could possibly receive in the negotiations before talks even begin.

Barack Obama’s embarrassing new attempt to channel Harry Truman with his angry populist appeals is doomed to failure for three reasons: wrong guy, wrong Congress, and wrong country.

Wrong Guy: Everything about the real Harry Truman made him a perfect representative of “the little guy”: his slight stature, humble boyhood on a Missouri farm, lack of formal education (he was the last president with no college degree), checkered business career, small-time and small-town associates and well-known habit of plain speaking. When he became “the accidental president” after FDR’s sudden death in 1945, establishment journalists compared him unfavorably with Roosevelt’s worldly sophistication and aristocratic style. Truman made his rough-hewn Missouri-stubbornness into a virtue when he faced the electorate in his underdog campaign in 1948, connecting far more effectively with ordinary, middle class Americans than his opponents, the mustachioed New York governor, Thomas E. Dewey and the suave, handsome third-party leftist, former Vice President Henry Wallace.

Obama has virtually nothing in common with Truman --other than their comparable experience of failure in promoting a sweeping new government health care program. The current president is an athletic ‘6’2”, with two prestigious Ivy League degrees, cosmopolitan tastes and vast personal wealth (earned largely from his bestselling books). He never attended American public schools, receiving his education either in Indonesia or, since fifth grade, at a posh, top-rated prep school (Punahou) in Hawaii. Where Truman’s father John Anderson “Peanuts” Truman (who measured all of 5’4” and 140 pounds) was a poor farmer and livestock salesman, both Obama’s parents held graduate degrees (his mother a PhD in anthropology and his father an economics MA from Harvard) and he was raised by his banker grandmother, for thirty years a Vice President of Bank of Hawaii. His wife Michelle, of course, holds blue-chip degrees from both Harvard and Princeton and earned close to a half-million a year in her career as a corporate attorney.

While most Americans remain ignorant of the details of Obama’s privileged background, they know that his attempts to portray himself as “just plain folks” ring phony and fraudulent. When he first assumed the presidency, his admirers tried to liken him to John F. Kennedy—an analogy that actually made some sense. Both men were tall, slender, preternaturally cool, expensively groomed, deeply narcissistic Ivy Leaguers who made up in glamour what they lacked in the common touch. It’s an idiotic strategy, however, to try to morph the suave, teleprompter-addicted “No Drama Obama” into the fiery “Give ‘Em Hell Harry.” It makes about as much sense as trying to transform George W. Bush into the wry, “philosopher king” egg-head, Adlai Stevenson.
Wrong Congress. In November of 1946, after just nineteen months as president, Harry Truman received a devastating political blow that made Obama’s recent message from Massachusetts look like a love-tap. Under Truman, the resurgent Republicans captured 13 new Senate seats and 56 fresh places in the House, giving them control of Congress for the first time in 16 years. As it happened, Truman turned this huge political defeat into a major electoral advantage when he campaigned for president two years later: he ran a feisty, indignant race blaming all the nation’s problems on “The Do-Nothing Republican Congress” and accusing his opponents of trying to dismantle FDR’s popular New Deal.

It’s obviously tempting for Barack Obama to similarly blame the struggling economy and his foreign policy reverses on the pompous insiders on Capitol Hill; after all, public opinion polls show that Congress is even less popular than he is. The problem, of course, is that the president’s own Democratic Party enjoys big majorities in both houses, and even with Scott Brown’s upset in Massachusetts, the Republicans still control nothing at all in the legislative branch. He may feel frustrated about his own “Do Nothing Congress” but attacking fellow-Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid (as either incompetent or malfeasant) won’t help make the case for electing still more Democrats in November. Angry populist rhetoric could work for President Truman in 1948 because the people had just gone through two years of the novel (and, as it turned out, short-lived) experience of GOP control of Congress. If Barack Obama, on the other hand, tries to exploit widespread anger at the current direction of government, it’s hard to see how the rage wouldn’t finally focus on the president and his allies.

THE WRONG COUNTRY. Impassioned efforts to bash business and demonize corporate power have rarely paid off in the past (just ask three-time presidential loser William Jennings Bryan or more recent flailing, failing demagogues like George McGovern, Walter Mondale, or John Edwards) and they certainly won’t work today. It’s true that Truman eked out his 1948 upset victory (49 percent to 45 percent) by claiming to represent common people against the Washington and Wall Street establishments, but with two prominent fringe party candidates he still fell short of a majority. What’s more, the nation has changed dramatically in the last sixty years, making the electorate far less susceptible to us-vs.-them, working class-vs.-ruling class appeals. For one thing, labor unions played a vastly greater role in elections at every level: in 1948, 28 percent of the civilian labor force affiliated with unions while today the number is less than 12 percent. Far more Americans own their own businesses in 2010 than hold union cards. What’s more, the old denunciations of “Wall Street” carry less political force when a clear majority of Americans (an estimated 55%) own shares in the stock market – compared with just 4% in 1950! In the Truman era, denunciations of greedy financiers (like FDR’s “economic royalists”) threatened mostly “them” but in today’s America any damage to the Dow Jones definitely impacts “us,” causing pain and loss for most (if not all) American families. Even many citizens with no stock portfolios understand that if big business suffers and declines then their own jobs are on the line. Could any observers of today’s economic dilemma believe that we will achieve a durable recovery if leading corporations and major banks don’t play a prominent role in it?

The recent foray into faux populism by the President of the United States reflects an administration in the midst of unraveling, its magical mantras of “hope” and “change” irretrievably tarnished, and its gauzy promises of a new golden age of bi-partisan cooperation looking more and more like a sour joke. President Obama understands that he needs to project a fresh start on health care, terrorism, spending, deficits, the economy, energy policy and more, but he prefers to experiment with an ill-fitting image adjustment, based on the success of one of his embattled predecessors. He may make vain attempts to impersonate Harry Truman, but the combination of mindless big government policies and feckless, self-righteous leadership increasingly bring to mind his deeper resemblance to Jimmy Carter.

The leading Islamic scholar in Yemen drew international praise for his purportedly "moderate" tone in a recent press conference. Sheikh Abdul Majid al-Zindani threatened jihad if America sent troops to Yemen, but also distanced himself from of al Qaeda. He said he'd never support terrorist acts and repeatedly claimed that Islam prohibits killing innocent civilians.

When asked by reporters to denounce Osama bin Laden, however, Zindani refused. "I don't know what is in his heart," he shrugged. "I don't know if he is good or bad." If Islam really forbids murder of innocents, how can the scholar fail to condemn a terrorist leader who brags openly about slaughtering civilians? Sheikh Zindani's contradictions show the folly of trying to judge an individual's heart rather than his actions, and the confusing position of many so-called Muslim moderates.

Conservatives want to stop the government takeover of the health care system, but they may already be too late. Federal figures show the U.S. spent $2.3 trillion on medical care in 2008-a staggering total of $7,681 per person. Nearly 60% of that money-$4,500 per individual-already comes from government at various levels. Most Americans remain ignorant of these monumental expenditures, making the system even more dysfunctional-the bulk of health care spending in this country is already out of control of the individual.

Still more government means still higher medical costs: in the last 30 years, the two major industries with inflation most dramatically above the national average are health care and higher education-two segments of society where government has injected vast increases in funding, and hugely raised costs.

Reporters recently asked Michelle Obama to give herself a grade on her first year’s performance. She laughingly refused, saying, "Really, how do you do that? And then what happens after you do?". The First Lady’s deft handling of this question contrasts with her husband’s clumsy, much-ridiculed willingness to award himself a grade-inflation mark of B .

In fact, the self-assured First Lady presents a stark contrast to the many recent fumbles of the Commander-in-Chief, and her ebullient approach to her job differs strikingly from her husband’s grim, joyless demeanor. The one-time apostle of “hope” now gives the impression of self-righteous suffering in office—more and more exemplifying the self-destructive presidential personality defined as “active-negative” by political scientist James David Barber and characterizing stubborn, troubled, arrogant leaders like Wilson, Hoover, Johnson, Nixon and Carter.

Desperate Democrats try to belittle the victory of Senator-elect Scott Brown by saying the charismatic candidate merely won a popularity contest, but that shouldn’t matter in Massachusetts, where all ten House members are Democrats – and six of them didn’t even draw Republican opponents last time! Brown swept independents, who sent Obama a potent message to stop reckless spending and expansion of government. Last time a Republican won this Senate seat was 1946, when Henry Cabot Lodge returned to the Senate after wartime service. He became Nixon’s running mate in 1960, so the last three elected Senators to this seat all ran national campaigns – Lodge as nominee for VP, JFK in a successful White House bid, and Teddy as as serious presidential contender. Scott Brown may someday continue the tradition with a national campaign of his own.