The Current Discussion: With the U.S. presidential primary season in full swing, there's a lot of talk here about "change" vs. "competence" in leadership. Which does your country have more of? Is that a good thing?

Here in the land of the fifteen-second attention span, we tend to be suckers for any political pitch that mentions change. Kennedy, Carter, Clinton -- they all promised change. For that matter, so did the brooding, volcanic Nixon and even the grandfatherly Reagan.

And it's not just in politics that we see this American addiction. In business, every chief executive promises to be a "change agent." Billions of dollars have been destroyed in these vain efforts at transformation--just look at the AOL-Time Warner merger for an example of smart people doing dumb things in the name of change.

I'm told that a gathering of U.S. intelligence officials several years ago was given a "Transformation Manifesto" with bromides like, "Instead of a chief innovation officer, our organizations may need a chief destruction officer" and, "Transformation is not a destination. It is a journey." Yikes! No wonder the U.S. intelligence community is such a mess.

Certainly America needs change, politically. After seven years, the Bush administration is a spent force. But even more, it needs competence. The truly egregious mistakes of the Bush administration were its management failures -- the ruinous mismanagement of post-war Iraq by the CPA, the stunningly botched response to Hurricane Katrina.

I'd be happy if Obama (or Hillary, or McCain, for that matter) said: I will bring change. And the essence of that change will be that the U.S. government will function effectively again, and that its leaders will make good decisions.

We don't need a change agent. We need a president.