How Do You Eat an Elephant?

As a navigator my job was to guide the aircraft through airspace where there were few navigation aids.  In the years before GPS there were vast areas around the world with no precise navigation stations and I would determine our position from calculations and sightings on the stars, and measuring the drift from changes in the pressure altimeter.  I was not a great navigator, but I was able to find my way amid the confusion around me.

One of the early lessons I learned was to prioritize the challenges and problems and attack them one at a time.  If I was ever unsure of where we were I went back to the last fix we had and worked the entire process forward until I determined our most probable position and then set out to confirm it.  We get ourselves in trouble when we forget to follow a logical flow in problem solving.  Occasionally, a flash of brilliance will rescue you, but as often as not that light at the end of the tunnel is just the 4:10 express about to run you over.

Our legislatures are kind of like that.  When they attempt to fix all the problems in the world with a single piece of legislation they tend to lose sight of what is important.  Maybe we would be better served if they could go back to 2008 and see what incremental steps we should take to improve our Nation?

So how do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.