Nevertheless, an improving economy and the prospect of health care reform forecast a brighter 2010.

It has been a difficult year, 2009 – a year that will go down in U.S. economic history as one of the toughest. The economy came perilously close to seizing up in a way that would have made the Great Depression look like primary school.

Heroic interventions by the Fed under Ben Bernanke and first Henry Paulson and then Tim Geithner at Treasury literally saved our economy. The current high unemployment rate is a concern, of course, but the alternative was catastrophic.

In a crisis, one often cannot wait for consensus. What is needed is decisive action.

We will look back at this period as one in which we were fortunate to have able, experienced and decisive hands on the economic tiller.

In Maine, we have lost 30,000 jobs in a state economy that has not been able to produce net new jobs for four out of the past five years.

We desperately need a real plan for economic development – one that will be sustained and not shelved as recent attempts such as the Brookings Report have been.

We need leadership and vision, both in short supply in Augusta. In this economy, any job opening is likely to have lots of applicants, and perhaps this explains the 20-odd candidates who have already declared for governor. Let's hope whomever emerges has a plan.

Fortunately, we have turned a corner with the economy. Recovery is likely to be slow in 2010, but recover we will.

Our president has gotten quite an education in governing. Henry Kissinger put it well recently when he compared the president to a chess grand master playing six games simultaneously.

"I just wish he would finish one of them," said Kissinger. The economy, financial regulation, Afghanistan, Pakistan, health care reform, global climate change, Iran's nuclear program, the Palestine-Israeli situation, and let's not forget Iraq, where a fragile democracy seems to be faltering – the number of issues requiring, even demanding, resolute action is as long as I can remember.

President Obama, to his credit, has assembled a strong, competent team. If he figures out a way to manage the process that brings out the best in his team, he has a chance to make a mark.

However, should he and the White House staff try to filter and control – to micromanage – then much will be lost.

What worked in the campaign will not work against this array of problems.

Moreover, I have not mentioned the most significant national problem – the decline of America's education system.

The current generation of American students will be the first in the history of our country with less education than the generation that went before them.

Education has been the foundation of American's extraordinarily vibrant economic record. That foundation is crumbling.

Obama's secretary of education, Arne Duncan, has good ideas, but he is up against powerful teachers' unions that tend to view new ideas as anathema.

Watch this debate closely. While it is unlikely to have the profile of health care reform, it will be more significant in the long term.

Meanwhile, Obama must get a form of universal health care passed. This is a moral imperative whose time has come.

T.R. Reid's compelling book, "The Healing of America," convinced me that the richest country in the world has an obligation to the 40 million of our citizens without health care.

I have been clinging to the (futile) hope that one or, even better, both of Maine's Republican senators will support the Senate bill.

There will be much about the bill to dislike, as it will be crammed with compromise and short on cost control. Nonetheless, it is a first step America needs to make.

From this one step, much can follow, and not just in health care. We are at an important time in our nation's history.

Those who take the narrow, partisan road at these times deserve to be marginalized.

Republican commentator Peggy Noonan has written a fine book, "Patriotic Grace," with a strong appeal: "But we are Americans and mean to make it better – to write something good on the page we sense turning.

To me it is not quite a matter of rising above partisanship, though that can be a very good thing. It is more a matter of remembering our responsibilities and reaffirming what it is to be an American."

These are words to ponder as we close out 2009 and look toward a new, and better, year ahead.