Peter Ubel

Did you know that Adolf Hitler had three testicles?

You didn’t? Well, you are right. That is just an urban legend — one that I have just created.

In fact, if anyone tells you that Hitler had three testicles, they are either misinformed or they are lying.

Why am I mentioning Hitler’s three testicles to you right now? Because by mentioning the myth of his three testicles, and debunking that same myth, I am actually increasing the odds that some time in the future you will mistakenly believe that Hitler really did have excess, um, baggage.

Behavioral scientists have discovered that familiarity breeds belief. In research studies, they have exposed people to series of true and false messages, telling people at the same time which of those messages were true or false. Later, they exposed people to these same messages, and asked them whether they thought the messages were true or false. They found that previous exposure to these messages increased the number of people who believed these messages were true, even the messages that had been identified as false.

How does this happen? People remember hearing the message (“Hmmm, three testicles, that sounds familiar”), but forget learning that the message was false.

Therein lies the brilliance of Sarah Palin’s death panels. Having heard this rumor countless times now, casual observers of politics (a.k.a. the majority of the American public) will come to believe that the rumor is true.

Lying, unfortunately, can be smart politics. And countering those lies by pointing out their falseness — that won’t be enough, if we believe what behavioral scientists have learned.

Proponents of health care reform must not only debunk these myths, they must also create powerful images to counter those myths — images of how health care reform would improve people’s lives. Images that can compete, if not with extra testicles, then at least with Sarah Palin’s face book page.

To learn more about my new book, Free Market Madness, check out my website: http://www.peterubel.com/.

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Republicans criticizing health care reform efforts are beginning to sound as principled as Groucho Marx, who once quipped: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them, . . . well I have others.” On the one hand Republicans complain that health care reform will cost too much money. On the other hand, they complain that Obama will ration care, killing your grandmother if he has to, to save money.

These two arguments are as consistent as what British people call pudding, about as coherent as a Sarah Palin resignation speech. And yet, it is the Democrats who, according to common wisdom, are divided over health care reform?

In fact, the battle over health care reform nicely summarizes the state of the two parties. The Democrats are deeply engaged in this important issue, struggling to find a way to pay for the health care our country needs, stumbling along the way due to the incredible complexity of our health care system, but nevertheless trying to move forward.

Meanwhile, the Republicans (except for a small number of moderates) refuse to acknowledge the importance and seriousness of this issue. All they care about is to oppose whatever plan the Democrats come up with. Hence, they throw out inconsistent criticisms without regard for their inconsistency.

The sad thing is, some Republicans really are concerned about the cost of health care reform. And others really are worried about how government will try to set limits on medical care. But to simultaneously complain about the financial cost of health care reform and about the cost savings that will follow from health care reform? This strategy merely reveals the current Republican Party as being uninterested in solving important social problems.

It is easy for a Party to be unified if its members are allowed to make incompatible claims about crucial policy issues, without acknowledging their own internal inconsistencies. If Republicans were honestly trying to help shape legislation, they would be every bit as divided as Democrats. Their current unity is merely a sign of their political self-marginalization.

We should all be concerned about the current state of the Republican Party. Health care legislation will be better if Republicans try to shape it, rather than merely trying to sabotage it.

We should all be thankful that the Democrats care enough about health care reform to have honest disagreements with each other. A Party divided is the sign of a Party deeply engaged in the issues. We can only hope that Democrats will come close enough together in the near future to begin fixing our badly broken health care system.

To read more of my blogs, and to learn more about my new book, Free Market Madness, check out my personal website.

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Any sensible plan to reform the U.S. health care system must reform the way we pay physicians. Currently, we reward doctors for doing more “stuff” for their patients — for performing tests and procedures whether or not these interventions are necessary. Because of this strange reimbursement system, many primary care physicians receive more money performing a five-minute skin biopsy than they do conducting an hour-long history and physical.

Yet as important as it is to reform how we pay physicians, it is even more important for us to have an honest national discussion about how much we pay physicians. In the U.S., the median anesthesiologist makes more than $350,000 per year. That doesn’t mean these people feel overpaid, however, for on the other end of the operating table their neurosurgeon colleagues make more than $600,000 per year, while down the street in the outpatient clinic, their dermatology colleagues pull in close to $400,000 per year. According to data collected by the American Medical Group Association, over two dozen medical specialties earn a median income of more than $300,000 per year.

In part, these physicians make lots of money because they perform lots of procedures. That means that if we reform the way we pay doctors for procedures, we might chip away at these astronomical incomes. But if we plan to reform our payment system, to discourage doctors from performing questionable procedures, we still need to decide how much money we want doctors to make. Obama has spoken fondly of the Mayo model of health care, in which physicians receive salaries, thereby reducing their incentive to perform unnecessary procedures. But Obama hasn’t said what physicians’ salaries ought to be, should the government make efforts to encourage a salaried medical system.

Health care reform ought to be forcing us to take a hard look at just how wealthy U.S. physicians have become in the last few decades, far wealthier in fact in their colleagues in other developed countries. Yet this topic of doctors’ incomes has been largely ignored in the public debate that has surrounded health care reform.

Doctors need to take the lead in making this issue public, and developing a solution to the problem. Politicians certainly aren’t going to tackle the issue of physician salaries. Republicans have committed themselves, sadly, to fighting whatever health care plan the Democrats put together, in hopes of weakening the Obama administration. And the Democrats are too afraid of medical organizations, like the AMA, to honestly address the issue of physician incomes.

Leading medical organizations should work with Congress to broker a deal. Perhaps a 10% cut in physician income (with smaller cuts, perhaps, for specialties that bring in less than $300,000 per year), in exchange for rigorous reform of medical malpractice law.

Rising health care costs threaten U.S. industry, which cannot compete with foreign companies that face lower costs; rising costs also threaten federal and state budgets, which are buckling under the strain of Medicare and Medicaid expenditures. Doctors need to do their part to lower health-care costs, by giving back some of their very generous income. And politicians need to work more closely with doctors, to make such a loss of income worth their while.

Peter Ubel is a primary care physician at the University of Michigan, who does not make even close to $300,000 per year, but who’d gladly take a pay cut to help move this country toward a more sensible health care system. He is also author of Free Market Madness: Why Economics is at Odds with Human Nature — and Why it Matters. Read more about this overpaid doctor at http://www.peterubel.com/ .

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American presidents have been trying to reform our health care system since at least the Nixon era, but with only limited success. Past reform efforts have failed for many reasons. For starters, the U.S. health care system is complex, with the medical industry making up almost 1/6 of our economy. But perhaps the biggest obstacle to reform is a psychological one: thoughts of health-care reform too often trigger images of putting for bogey instead of putting for par.

I am referring to the psychological power of loss aversion, a phenomenon that behavioral economists have been studying for several decades now. Most of us, you see, seek to avoid losses with greater fervor than we seek to achieve equal gains. If given a 50-50 chance of either winning or losing $100, we decline. The $100 loss looms larger than the $100 gain. For similar reasons, most people express greater interest in surgical procedures that carry 90% survival rates than in ones that carry 10% mortality rates, even though these procedures are identical. Thinking about mortality triggers loss aversion. This week we even learned that loss aversion influences putting behavior among professional golfers. When putting to avoid a bogey, golfers are more aggressive than when putting for birdie, and consequently are more likely to make their putts. Few things are more motivating than the desire to avoid losses.

Which brings us back to health care reform. When President Clinton attempted an overhaul of our health care system in the 90′s, his administration correctly recognized the need to control health care costs. Without cost containment, they knew it would be impossible to expand health care insurance to the millions of people who lacked such coverage. So the Clinton administration looked for ways to increase the number of Americans enrolled in managed care plans, which at that time had achieved some success in controlling health care expenditures.

The problem with the Clinton approach was that it made Americans feel like they were losing their traditional health care. Managed care was infamous for saying no — for denying people health care services and for limiting their choice of doctors. By taking things away from people, managed care triggered loss aversion. Consequently, the American public never supported Clinton’s reform efforts.

The Obama administration is steeped with people knowledgeable about behavioral economics, who hope to keep the public from slipping into a state of loss aversion. Not surprisingly, then, the administration has enthusiastically embraced research out of Dartmouth University, demonstrating huge regional variations in medical expenditures that have not been accompanied by any variation in health care quality. According to this research, some cities in the US spend twice as much per capita on health care as other cities without experiencing any discernible improvement in health.

Obama’s people hope that Americans will perceive health care reform as a win-win opportunity, with lower health care costs through the elimination of waste and inefficiency, accompanied by more stable and secure health care coverage. But even if the administration succeeds in assuaging the fears of the general public, they face a much stiffer challenge with the health care industry. Any success they have in controlling health care costs will, after all, create losers. If we spend less money on health care in the US, then someone in the health care industry is going to take a financial hit. One person’s waste is another person’s income.

No surprise, then, that both the insurance industry and the AMA have begun pushing back against elements of the Obama plan. These groups stand to lose money under health care reform. Hospitals are likely to lose money too, as are drug companies, medical device companies, and other powerful parts of our vast health care industry. All of these groups will be motivated to fight health care reform.

The Obama administration has made a point of distinguishing its behavioral approach to economics from the more traditional approach embraced by the Bush administration. Ironically, though, it is the Bush administration that understood how to pass health care reform without triggering loss aversion. When George W. Bush decided to push for a Medicare drug plan, he recognized that the pharmaceutical industry would wield its powerful lobbying strength against his efforts if they feared a loss of income. So he crafted a plan that benefited the drug industry. Politicians on the left criticized these concessions to industry, but it is hard to imagine the drug plan passing without such concessions.

Obama should draw a lesson from his predecessor. If he causes the health care industry to perceive his health plan as a threat to their incomes, his plan will face stiff resistance. For health care reform to succeed, people in the health care industry need to keep making exorbitant sums of money for awhile. Over time, the government can gradually ratchet down health care costs. But initially, Obama needs to reduce the number of people who perceive health care reform as a loss.

The cost will be steep. But the alternative will be more costly. We cannot afford to make reform feel like a health care bogey.

Peter Ubel is author of Free Market Madness: Why Human Nature Is at Odds with Economics — and Why It Matters (Harvard Business Press, 2009), and Director of the Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine at the University of Michigan.

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Hiking in Switzerland several years ago, I came across a trail that seemed to dead-end at a farmer’s gate. I looked around for a way to avoid the property, but there was none. Instead, the trail continued through the middle of the farm. I walked through the gate, side-stepping some livestock in the way (and side-stepping even more livestock manure!), until I exited the farm through another gate, back out to public property.

What a wonderfully un-American attitude towards property rights. And towards walking. The Swiss have created a culture of walking. I wonder if we can use some of the Obama stimulus money to begin transforming our culture in similar ways.

Compare my experience in Switzerland to the typical visit to the suburbs. No sidewalks on the street. No grocery stores or shops within walking distance. That doesn’t promote a culture of physical activity.

The desire to walk, or to exercise in any manner, is not just a function of individual choice. It is also a desire that is strongly influenced by one’s surroundings. A study in Salt Lake City recently showed that people who live in older neighborhoods are thinner than those who live in newer neighborhoods, a thinness partly attributable to their greater tendency to walk.

We Americans are unlikely to cede property rights to local fitness enthusiasts any time soon. We won’t be opening up our gates to walkers and bikers either.

But because of the Obama stimulus bill, many local governments are looking for shovel-ready construction projects. I hope that in doing so, they look for ways to design neighborhoods that promote physical activity.

The free market, left to its own devices, doesn’t necessarily consider what kind of neighborhoods promote our best interests. We are our neighborhoods. Our culture begins at home.

With intelligent regulations, such as thoughtful neighborhood zoning, we can influence our ability and willingness to engage in healthy activities like biking and walking. We owe it to ourselves to create healthy neighborhoods.

To read more of my blogs, and to learn more about my new book, Free Market Madness, check out my personal website: http://www.peterubel.com

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On the Freakonomics blog recently, Ian Ayres reviewed my new book Free Market Madness, and singled out a story I tell there. Ian has written many books himself, so it isn’t surprising which story, of the many stories in my book, he discussed.

He picked out a section near the end of the book, where I describe my efforts to interest a leading editor in my book idea. After asking to know the bottom-line, take-home message of my book, the editor asked me whether I was “aiming for a nuanced argument?” I responded yes, and then explained how I hoped to write a nuanced book that could nevertheless be marketed with a crisp sound bite. I lost his interest at the word “yes.”

Anyone trying to write a political book the last few years knows about this other “n” word: Nuance.

Publishers don’t want nuance, they want controversy. They don’t want authors to grapple with difficult choices, but prefer people like Ann Coulter who can sell books by making outrageous claims.

Perhaps with Obama in the White House, we can hope for a new era of nuance. Certainly, my new book is very much in the spirit of Obama’s way of thinking.

In Free Market Madness, I try to do three things:

(1) Entertain readers with surprising examples of the often hidden forces that influence the way we humans think, decide and behave. I show the peculiar mix of rational and irrational that make up human nature, the often surprising combination of conscious and unconscious decisions that determine our life trajectories. Did you know, for example, that people named Paul are more likely to migrate to St. Paul, Minnesota than are people named Joe, unconsciously influenced by what social psychologists call implicit egotism?

(2) Give readers a brief and colorful history of the link between economists’ beliefs in human rationality and libertarians’ faith in free markets to promote people’s best interests. Readers of my book will see that I am a huge fan of capitalism and liberty. But I also recognize that completely unfettered markets can harm not only those people who make unwise decisions, but have spillover effects on everyone else; that consumers’ choices aren’t as “free” as we think, because we humans can be manipulated by those who understand our weaknesses.

(3) Defend the idea of nuance. We have to find a balance between liberty and well-being, when the two collide. Freedom is a good, on its own, but freedom to take out mortgages we cannot afford, after being persuaded to do so by people who can make money off our decisions, can lead to widespread economic disaster.

Government regulations always have costs. But there are costs, too, in standing by on the sidelines and leaving everything up to the market. My hope is to get people arguing less about the extremes– capitalism versus socialism; freedom versus government control– and more about the large, gray zone in the middle, a zone where I expect we will often find the best policies.

In his inaugural address, President Obama had this to say:

“Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control.”

Hallelujah.

Fittingly, my book came out on the day of Obama’s inauguration. But now I’m wondering whether Obama, with all his newfound power, got hold of an advanced copy. Because his version of nuance, as expressed so eloquently in his inaugural address, is exactly the tone I tried to set in Free Market Madness.

Let the era of nuance begin!

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“With luck, Ted Kennedy will be dead soon.”

She uttered these words two minutes after expressing hope that the nation would rally behind Obama. A lifelong Republican, she had voted for McCain. I expect she harbored concerned about Obama’s terrorist pals and his anti-American pastor. But with Obama now newly elected as president, she was already beginning to forget what she used to find so terrifying about him. As an American, and as someone who worried about the stiff challenges facing our country, she had no choice but to wish him well. To hope for Obama to fail would, after all, be to hope for America to fail.

But Ted Kennedy — that was a whole other matter. Out of nowhere, in what had otherwise been a pleasant conversation, she brought up his name. “Did you know,” she asked, “that he never graduated from law school?” I didn’t actually. “Did you know how wild he was when he first became a senator?” she asked. I had heard a bit about that, but wasn’t that, like, 40 years ago? “I hope he dies soon. I really do,” she said.

I was dumbfounded. Home for the holidays, I had known that I would be surrounded by ardent Republicans from both sides of the family. My children, you see, have four Republican grandparents and a slew of Republican aunts and uncles. Politically speaking, I think of myself as a flaming moderate, but both sides of my family think of me as a pinko — for not supporting our initial invasion of Iraq; for questioning the wonders of the free market (horror of horrors: I even have a book out now called Free Market Madness!)

But while I expected to hear people complain about how liberals are ruining America, I did not expect to hear anyone call for the death of an ailing senator. This sentiment was so raw, so primal, it flabbergasted me. What had Ted Kennedy done lately to deserve such vitriol? Had his passionate pursuit of universal health care earned him such enmity?

No. None of the complaints she uttered concerned any recent aspect of Kennedy’s life. (I’m leaving her identity unnamed, but I want to clarify that the person I’m writing about was neither an aunt nor grandmother of my children.) In her 70s, she was clearly stuck in the 60s.

I’ve drawn a lesson from this conversation, about the challenges Obama will face trying to bring our country together. The 60′s may have happened forty years ago, but the cultural battles begun back then have not completely run their course. Many elderly conservatives still hate democrats with great passion. And though they find it hard to direct that hatred toward Obama, they have plenty of other people to direct their hatred towards.

And direct this hatred they will! Psychologists have long known that when people’s world views are threatened, they grasp for ways to affirm their beliefs. A recent study published in the prestigious journal Psychological Science reveals the strange depths to which we humans will plunge to affirm our beliefs.

In stage one of the study, a research assistant asked participants to fill out a questionnaire. The research assistant was a moderately attractive blonde haired young woman in a scarf. I mention this not because I’m sexist, but because her physical appearance is important for the study. You see, the research assistant headed off to the file cabinet to get a copy of the survey, and in doing so, switched places with another moderately attractive blonde haired young woman wearing an identical sweater and scarf. The two research assistants shared moderate similarities in their appearance, but anybody looking at the two of them at the same time could easily tell them apart.

However, the research participants weren’t looking at the two at the same time and comparing them. They were in a situation where they expected that they were interacting with a single research assistant. And when the second research assistant came back with a copy of the survey, most of them didn’t realize that this was a different person. Instead, something felt wrong about the situation. Their world view had been challenged. They assumed they were doing a simple survey in a comfortable setting, but instead found themselves feeling acutely uncomfortable for reasons they couldn’t quite grasp.

That’s when stage two of the study takes place. In this stage, the participants filled out the survey, which presented them with a hypothetical report about the arrest of a prostitute. Participants were asked to play the role of a judge and determine proper bail for this woman.

The research participants — still feeling all these negative emotions, still knowing that something in their view of the world wasn’t fitting together correctly — slapped a huge bail on the hypothetical prostitute, a dollar amount significantly greater than the value chosen by a control group who had not experienced the surreptitious switching of their research coordinator’s identity.

When people’s world views are threatened, they look for ways to confirm other parts of their world view, often with vigor. When they cannot detest Obama, therefore, they revisit the sins of Ted Kennedy’s youth with righteous vengeance.

Many Republicans are feeling quite threatened right now. The validity of their world view has been questioned, by events and also by the majority of American voters. We can all hope that Obama will be able to unite people across this partisan divide. But we should be prepared for many ardent Republicans to respond to these threats by looking for fresh targets.

There are many reasons we can hope that Ted Kennedy will overcome his brain tumor and live a long time. But now there is a new reason to hope for this — the longer he lives, the more he can soak up Republican ire, and reduce the chance that Republicans will redirect their negative emotions toward our new president.

For more information on my book, Free Market Madness, check out my website at http://www.peterubel.com/.

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Not long before the presidential election, the Wall Street Journal editorial page warned its readers about what it called the attack of the killer Oreos. You have to admit it’s a pretty sensational image — of an Oreo silently stalking its prey, leaping upon an unsuspecting consumer. In fact, this is exactly the kind of image Journal editorialists wanted people to think about when voting in November. “One of the things at stake in this election,” the Journal reminded us, “is who will run agencies like the FCC, which have enormous discretionary power.” And an Obama administration, we were warned, will interfere with companies’ abilities to market their products to us, and our children.

If the current economic crisis has taught us anything, it is that unfettered markets are not the godsend that libertarians would have us believe. Our current economic mess is due, in no small part, to deregulation gone wild.

It is no surprise that the Wall Street Journal opposes the idea of regulating advertisement of junk food to kids. So even as companies find more ways to saturate our brains with images of their products — paying TV shows to incorporate their products into plot lines for example — free market evangelists remain unconcerned. As our children become increasingly obese with each passing year, these people can’t understand why some of us would like to protect our children from things like junk food advertising.

Behind the Journal‘s view is a belief that humans are immune to any negative consequences of advertising:

Viewers already understand exactly what’s going on when a TV character flaunts a name brand,” they opined, “and that awareness is the best defense against whatever ‘manipulation’ is going on.”

In making this statement, Journal editorialists are flaunting their ignorance of human nature. As a physician, I have spent my clinical time caring for patients — smokers, overeaters, under-exercisers — who have been harmed by many of the products that these kind of libertarians would want us to free from regulation. As a behavioral scientist, I have studied how easy it can be to unconsciously influence people’s behavior. As the father of 8 and 10 year-old boys, I have yearned for a government that is willing to step in, when necessary, to protect my kids from the harmfulness of our excessive consumerism.

We live in a market-oriented economy. But a sensible society will recognize when the market needs to be reigned in.

Peter Ubel is Professor of Medicine at the University of Michigan and author of Free Market Madness: Why Economics is at Odds with Human Nature–and Why it Matters (Harvard Business Press, January 2009). To learn more, visit http://www.peterubel.com/

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Lance Armstrong will soon be competing again in bicycle races around the world, meaning that the casual biking fan will once again show interest in the sport. It also means that doping allegations against Armstrong are likely to resume. If Lance wins some big races — at his age and after so long away from the sport — some people will be convinced he has found a way to cheat. If he loses, then who cares about his age and his time away from the sport — his losses will be evidence that he must have cheated in the past and is failing at the sport now only because it’s harder to cheat.

I confess to having mixed feelings about the cheating rampant in sports like bicycling. No system will ever pick up all the cheaters. Part of me, then, thinks we should let people do whatever they want — mainline steroids, experiment with gazelle DNA, whatever — and let the fastest creature win.

But a larger part of me yearns for clean, unadulterated performances. I’d like to see what humans can do when pushed to their natural limits.

When it comes to EPO, however, I am less conflicted. I don’t see the point in banning this drug, when there are natural ways to reap its benefits.

EPO is a hormone secreted naturally by the kidneys, to stimulate the body to produce red blood cells. Red blood cells carry oxygen around our bodies. And oxygen, I have discovered, is a good thing to have in abundance when riding a bicycle up a relentless incline at high altitude.

Our bodies normally produce enough EPO to keep our hemoglobin level (that’s the blood test we doctors rely upon to assess oxygen carrying capacity) at a standard level, a level that varies a bit person to person within a fairly narrow range. A person who takes EPO, however, will experience a rise in their hemoglobin count. A person who takes too much EPO, in fact, will get so many extra red blood cells that their blood will become thick, and they will risk experiencing a stroke.

Athletes who use EPO try to increase their hemoglobin level enough to increase their performance, without experiencing a stroke. This isn’t too hard to do. There’s a good margin of error.

In fact, athletes have found natural ways to increase their hemoglobin supply. The simplest way is to simply train in high altitude. When our bodies are regularly deprived of oxygen, our kidneys squeeze out EPO so we can absorb available oxygen more efficiently. Some athletes, rather than train at a high altitude, sleep in specialized tents that mimic the conditions of high altitude.

Do you see why I’m ambivalent about EPO? We live in a strange world, where it is wrong to boost your hemoglobin supply by taking synthetic EPO, but okay to do so by sleeping in a special tent. We live in a world where you’re banned from sports if you live in Texas and inject EPO, but rewarded if you live in the Himalayas and benefit from your body’s natural EPO production.

I think we should lift the ban on EPO and make rules that set limits on hemoglobin levels. Athletes will be banned from performing if their hemoglobin exceeds some level, put on probation if it is in some gray zone, and allowed to compete if it’s below the accepted cutoff. Professional athletes would monitor their own hemoglobin, take EPO or sleep in a specialized tent if their hemoglobin falls below their target, and drain some blood out of their system if their hemoglobin rises too high. With this system, everyone’s hemoglobin will sit somewhere in the safe zone, whether it gets there naturally or unnaturally, and we wont have to worry about somebody having an advantage over anyone else. Nor will test monitors have to monitor that people have found ways to mask the use of synthetic forms of drugs like EPO.

I’m sure such a system would be more complicated than I’ve laid out here. Heck, this is a blog post, not an academic paper.

But isn’t this idea worth serious consideration?

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If President-elect Obama wants to know the challenges he can expect to contend with in his first 100 days of office, his “honeymoon period,” he need look no further than the state of Michigan.

I’m not talking about what he can learn from Michigan about unemployment, where we are #1!

I’m not talking about lessons he can learn from Michigan about relations with the Middle East, given the large population in Michigan who originate from that part of the world.

I’m not talking about any of these things. Instead, I’m talkin’ football…Wolverine football, and the pressures that come to those who take on new leadership positions in a world saturated with 24/7 media.

The University of Michigan football team brought in a new leader this year, Rich Rodriguez from West Virginia, with expectations that this innovative coach would turn our good football team back into a great one, one that would regularly compete for national championships.

The parallels between the situations facing Rodriguez and Obama are impressive. Like Rodriguez, Obama will come to his new leadership position amidst expectations that he will return the United States back into the world’s premier super power.

Both Rodriguez and Obama face a flat world. The globalized economy is going to be a huge challenge for Obama, with no single country able to dominate the world’s economy any more. Similarly, the flattening of the college football world is a challenge for Rodriguez, a world in which formally dominant programs like Nebraska and Notre Dame find themselves struggling to keep up with the increasing number of colleges investing huge money in their football programs.

Both Rodriguez and Obama must also contend with a vicious 24/7 news cycle that feeds on controversy and that promotes impatience. ESPN and CNN need material to fill up time. Talk radio stations–covering sports or politics–have lots of time to kill too, and consequently don’t pause for a moment to absorb new information before pronouncing something a success or failure–how could he have chosen so and so as starting QB or as head of the Justice Department!?

Is it possible for a leader to thrive in this environment? And to survive, do they have to experience immediate success?

Recent experience in Michigan suggests that success doesn’t have to be immediate. Rodriguez had a horrible first season at Michigan. Unprecedentedly horrible. The Wolverines lost to their arch rival, Ohio State, for the umpteenth time in a row, broke their record of successive years in a bowl game, and even lost to the University of Toledo. (Toledo!)

The 24/7 media should have chewed Rodriguez up and spit him out by now, based on the way they’ve dealt with other people who don’t garner immediate success. But by and large, they haven’t. And it’s illuminating to think of why they’ve laid off so far, and ponder how that might payoff for Obama when he becomes President.

You see, everyone knew that Rodriguez did not inherit a team ready to fit into his new scheme. He didn’t inherit a quarterback compatible with his offensive system. (Heck, he didn’t inherit a quarterback compatible with any division 1 team’s system.) To make matters worse, he inherited only one returning starter on the entire offense. Defense looked like it would be Michigan’s strength, but how strong can a defense be when it is exhausted by the end of the first quarter, getting no chance to rest because of the ineptitude of its offense?

We Michiganders (yep, that’s what we’re called) knew things would get worse before they got better. So far we have been willing to give Rodriguez a chance to demonstrate what he can do when he has had time to implement his new system, with people he has recruited.

I don’t know how long Rodriguez can continue to struggle before people start calling for his head. Another 3-win season and many Wolverine fans will thirst for blood. But show fans some progress, and they’ll wait at least one more year.

Like Rodriguez, Obama has a few returning players–Gates at defense, and those nine folks over at the Supreme Court–but he’ll be bringing in a new team, ready to make dramatic changes from the Bush Administration. And he will inherit insanely difficult challenges. People know that things are broken now, and won’t be fixed overnight. They even expect things to get worse before they get better. This is all to Obama’s advantage.

Let’s hope the hunger of our 24/7 media, and the insatiable appetite of the blogosphere, doesn’t lead too quickly to calls for Obama’s head when things don’t turn around in 100 days.

So far Rich Rodriguez has survived the rigors of the passionate Wolverine fan base. He has managed people’s expectations, while doing everything in his power to turn things around.

Let’s hope Obama can continue to manage the public’s expectations of what he will accomplish in his first term as president.

Although the challenges Obama faces tower over those facing Rodriguez, Obama does have one thing in his favor: unlike Rodriguez, he doesn’t have to compete again in Ohio for four more years.

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