The relation of the present to the past and the future is quite complex. The present uses the past so as to project itself into the future, to make history come about, which means to turn a mere succession of events into a story. Here are some items of the moment, all of which happen to be presentiments of things to come, which may be the case with all experiences of the moment in that every moment is sensed as a part of an unfolding story, the alternative being that every moment is forced into being a part of an unfolding story even if, in itself, it is nothing of the sort.

First, an event can be perceived as an instance of what might become a pattern. The insight is to notice not just the pattern but that the instance has coherence and so can be an example of a pattern.

Joe Biden is carrying the message for this week, while Obama is on vacation and while the various committees of soon to be senior officials are putting together their plans for Obama to consider once he gets back from Hawaii. Biden has appeared on This Week, on Larry King, and elsewhere, and even managed to get into a tiff with Chaney which could not help but play out to the advantage of the incoming administration which has nothing yet to apologize for, while Chaney is either in denial or just denying what is now the conventional wisdom about the Bush Administration, which is that it was just no damned good.

Obama had himself presided over the previous two weeks of press conferences in which he doled out his cabinet and strove to make very little news, succeeding in being not particularly eloquent, just the supplier of some information, which made the media hinge on every word. So between the two of them, the incoming Administration has kept itself newsworthy only for the purpose of reminding people that they are at their work of preparation and will be taking office a month from now. This is to the credit of their communications director, who orchestrates media appearances for top people, and also, just maybe, because that is what this administration really will be about: no announcements when there is nothing of substance to announce, just a reminder that somebody is (or will be) in charge. So far, the Obamans are in charge of the press, not the other way round.

Second, an event can be noticed as repeating in general outline and with modifications an event of the past that is still a preoccupation in the present. The insight is to notice the similarities and differences between the two events as well as to have noticed in the first place that the two can be compared.

Is Caroline Kennedy a liberal version of Sarah Palin? I hope not, but she is giving all the signs. She has her conventionally liberal viewpoints released for her by her press spokesperson; she gives short and bland interviews and does not address policy issues, much less controversial policy issues; her people let on she does not want to be too forward in trying to persuade the governor, even while the press cannot get enough of her. The brief snippets of her on the news present (or reveal) her as rather fragile. I don’t care if she doesn’t reveal financial data until and if she is named Senator; I do care whether she shows she has some political moxie: a biting tongue, or an oratorical style, or a plethora of facts for instant recall, or any of those other indications that she is suited to the job. I hope Bush 43 and Palin have not legitimated the idea that a name and/or a charming smile are all you need to serve in high public office. John Quincy Adams was no light weight.

Third, there are perceptions noticed as repeating preoccupations and conceptualizations of the past in contexts that are arguably quite dissimilar. The insight is to notice something off in the comparison, not that the comparison is or could be made.

Why is the New York Times so obsessed with the fact that Bernard Madoff is a Jew? He had to be something. Yet the Times ran one of those unnecessary non-news articles today about opinion at Yeshiva University about whether it is worse for Jews to exploit other Jews and whether Judaism requires morality and not just ritual observance, all of those having opinions on the last issue stating that it did, though a case could be made that a person is only an observant Jew if they follow the rituals, and being a good Jew, someone who is also moral, is another thing entirely. Catholics would also argue that a Christian, being someone who accepts that Jesus is his Savior, may nevertheless still not be a good person and in that sense also not a good Christian. What you are is different from whether you are good at it, as any examination of professionals can attest: there are people who are teachers who are not very good teachers; there are doctors who are not very good doctors; and so there are religious people who are not very moral.

Why this elementary distinction eludes the Times and those interviewed at Yeshiva makes me think that both entities are being defensive when they should know better and not share in the ways the generally Judeophile press corps still bends over backwards to make up for the Holocaust. The press, Chris Matthews a notable exponent of liberal good will, think it disgraceful that Jews would exploit other Jews. The thing is, though, that every group exploits its own because they are the ones around and they are the ones who will place a trust in you that can then be abused. The sociologist in me remembers that the Irish exploited the Irish, the Jews exploited the Jews, and the Italians exploited the Italians when those groups first immigrated to the United States. Face facts, don’t just exhibit sensitivities. The Jews don’t have to be defensive about their position in America. This is their home.

Fourth, an idea still unfolding in the present can be noticed as such because it cannot as yet be adequately treated as an example of a theory for which both the present and the past supply examples nor is the idea all that clearly an idea fresh enough to stand on its own rather than as an example for a present or future theory. The insight is to notice that an idea itself is still in development both in an individual mind and in public discourse.

I’m not an economist and so I don’t understand why large bundles of money aren’t made up of small piles of money. Obama is going to save on a fighter plane so as to offset the costs of infrastructure projects, though the amount paid out in infrastructure projects will be so large that the gigantic national debt that will result will be repaid only because, down the road, there will be more tax revenues when the economy recovers and even more tax revenues if it recovers more quickly. So what difference does a fighter plane project make if everything gets balanced, as the expression goes, only in the outyears?

Obama is going to have to find some way of deciding which projects are worthwhile, which have merit in themselves and not just as ways of spending money. Biden has said worthwhile projects are investments in something, schools or highways, which are add to the nation’s ability to be productive and efficient. Virtually any project can meet that overbroad definition, including the fabled bridge to nowhere which, after all, went to somewhere, an island that had a landing strip that could become the economic focal point of the area.

Anyway, how do you calculate when the rebuilding program has become too expensive? Spending in World War II was calculated in terms of whatever is needed to win, a cost paid off by post-war inflation and prosperity. But even then, production was cut in 1945 because it looked like we were winning the war. If we declare the war on lack of prosperity a permanent one, does that mean that we can continue to unbalance budgets so long as intermittent levels of prosperity mean that the percentage of debt being paid off is at least equal to or maybe larger than what was paid off the year before? I don’t know. Considerations of this sort reek of a moral rather than an economic calculus: it is a good thing to pay off your debts. But if it is a debt to ourselves, as liberal economists say, and paying it off simply means bearing good faith to yourself that you are making payments in earnest, I don’t see that as much of a discipline of repayment as rhetoric, though maybe all that is needed, during the latest revision of Keynesian economics, is rhetoric.

It is very hard for people to live in, much less to capture a sense of, the moment. Unlike my dog, people are always comparing the present to the future and the past. What we can do, however, is capture the qualities of the states of mind, the kinds of thought, the quick processes of thought, whereby the intersections of the three are negotiated, those intersections, of course, always occurring in the present even as speculation about what is happening during those intersections is transcendental. One feature of these intersections that can be drawn from the examples I have supplied is that the examples are themselves ephemeral, moments caught only for a moment, in that tomorrow or the next day they will no longer be able to be stated in the same way. Obama will be sensed as either more or less in charge, so that the perception that he is being noticed as in charge will be old hat. Caroline Kennedy will be revealed or accepted as being what she already alludes to being, and so there will be less of a sense of striving to find out what she is from the glimmers she presents. Madoff will be old news or people will find the story of his Jewishness to have no shelf life, Madoff just another crook in an era of unregulated businesses where investors had the feeling of entitlement to do well that allowed them to disregard signals or not carefully investigate the places or people with whom they entrusted their money. And ideas get better formulated or are recognized as confused and flawed and so no longer of interest, those that get better formulated no longer needing to be referred back to the earlier formulations, for what good is that? So the moment you step your foot into the water of culture, the water is no longer the same water, that water having moved downstream, you left to contemplate the culture that was and will be even though, as a matter of fact, you do feel water surrounding your feet.

All these suppositions have come to pass in the past few days, now that it is the day before New Year’s Eve. The Israeli attack on Hamas is now the event of the moment. The Obama people do not need a way to fill up the time; they need only report that Obama and his people are being briefed. The question is whether he will make an announcement on Israel during his first day in office or within the first week, that along with other anticipated announcements concerning foreign and domestic initiatives. And when Caroline Kennedy’s second series of interviews did not seem to dispel the impression that she was not sufficiently glib to be a politician and had no particular reason for running other than her name, the story lost even its luster as a fantasy of a much delayed return to Camelot in light of the much more serious events taking place. The Associated Press provided a death notice today to the Caroline boomlet by running a story that did no more than report continued misgivings about her candidacy. Madoff, in similar fashion, has, by this eve of New Year’s Eve, used up his moment of celebrity, though he may reclaim it to some degree when his trial or his public set of excuses and apologies begin. The Jewish issue in the news is, again, Israel, rather than Jewish-American ethnicity, though we don’t know how long that will last if the war against Hamas goes according to plan, which means that Israel will achieve some of its objective, which is to diminish Hamas for some time to come, and not have to execute a similar attack for another thing or two. Not a great way for a country to live, but have you any better suggestions? And what Obama will do about the economy falls back as what to do in the world springs forward, the two to shift their positions many times in the course of the next year or so. That seems certain, doesn’t it?