The American public is like a baby sitting in his highchair yelling and screaming and banging his Tommy Tippy Cup on the tray; he can't tell you exactly what's bothering him or how to fix it, but yelling and screaming sure feels good.

He has no patience and wants whatever he wants immediately. We are that baby. We are so ensconced in a tableau of immediate gratification that we actually believe (no, expect) a crisis that has taken years to develop to be corrected in months.

Sarah Palin and her tea-party cohorts remind me of a cartoon my brother sent me years ago. Two buzzards are sitting in a tree and one says to the other, "Wait, hell! I'm going to go kill something!" She actually was chastising President Barack Obama for his law-school, professorial approach to governing instead of taking action.

Let me translate that from Palin-speak to English: Don't think about it, just do something.

Sounds vaguely like the leadership philosophy that brought us to where we are today. And, if you take time to consider, lends insight into how Ms. Palin would govern if she were president.

Take a chill pill, folks. Economic indicators seem to suggest the worst may be nearly over. The economy seems to be flattening instead of plunging.

As my incredibly astute wife observes, "Flat is the new up." Don't expect improvement to be in the form of rapid growth. Should that happen, we will continue to experience the destabilization of an economic roller coaster. Let's give it some time to stabilize and then gradually gain momentum. This, however, requires a trait so lacking in the American psyche ... patience.

Tom Kellogg is in the hospitality industry and lives in Tesuque.