Letter to the Next President

Sadly, Michael Pollan's open letter to Barack Obama (OK, it's actually addressed to the “president-elect”) is likely to stay at the bottom of the new chief executive's memo pile for some time, given the several seemingly more immediate crises he will be dealing with.

Pollan, a science journalist and the author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma, published his letter—no doubt written weeks ago—in this coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine. In it, he warns Obam—er, the next president—that “the health of a nation's food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.”

He's right about it being a critical issue and indeed one that is not wholly divorced from our current crises. But there are a lot of things that in normal times might demand the president's attention but will probably have to take a back seat for a while. When your house is on fire, you tend to concentrate on dousing the flames and fix your crumbling foundation later.