We're not really voting for a candidate.  We're voting for the team that candidate will bring to Washington.  Keep that in mind -- despite all the attention being paid to Bush's background and Kerry's background, who they are as individuals is not the measure of what kind of government we'll have.  (I'm listening to the debate with half an ear as I post this -- nothing new so far; all the same bland statements we've already heard -- so maybe it's good news that we're not voting for either of these guys.) 

What should we look for in the team we vote into office?  We all know that complex systems do best when they're poised between rigidity and randomness -- quivering, dynamic, right between too much order and too much chaos.  When systems are in this position, they grow and change with ease, without becoming either too stuck (and unable to take on new information that would help them adapt) or too wacky (drifting into disorder and unable to achieve any advances).

We're in a rigid state right now.  We're afraid.  We're full of concern about security and globalization and epidemics and who knows what.  We're clamping down.  We're closing our borders and our minds to outside information.  This may be heresy in these days of fear, but it's clear to me that we've gone too far in this direction.  Too much order is in our lives, and we have the illusion that we can control our destinies.  We have the arrogance to believe that we can be completely safe.

We need to choose the team that will move the lever in the direction of openness and dynamism.  We need to choose the team that is willing to listen to the rest of the world -- to take on information and energy from others.  Otherwise, we'll be cutting ourselves off from unknown and possibly better destinies.  Sure, we can't see exactly where we're going.  No one can.  But we can do our best to make sure that we remain the agile and gifted country that we have been in the past.

Based on what we know of the Bush team, that group isn't about to loosen up.  They'll be looking, instead, for more and more order.  More security.  More authentication.  More collection of information.  More structure.

We don't know much about the Kerry team, but Kerry himself says he wants to talk to other countries.  He's signaling openness.  He's a guy who likes to do investigations.  If his team includes some former Clintonites, we're likely to get quite a bit of energy and maybe some disorder along the way.  We'll learn new things, we'll engage with the rest of the world, and we'll stay on our toes.

Along this axis, this continuum between rigidity and randomness, we need to pull the knob that moves us more towards a dynamic future.  Take a good look at these two teams -- not these two guys.  The risk of increased order is unacceptably great.