After weathering the craziest autumn in economics and politics in untold decades, Americans have a right to ask: what should we learn from it all?

The last time so much changed so rapidly in our country, the 9-11 Commission was appointed to explain the run-up to disaster and point us in a new direction.

I think we need that same sort of guidance today.

In recognition of George W. Bush’s last full day in office, I propose we reverse the order of the numbers and appoint a “1-19 Commission” to sift through the rubble.

But since we’re now buried under a pile of debt, this will have to be a gratis, DIY affair. So here are my thoughts on the lessons that should be gleaned:

1. “Dynasty” ends in “nasty.” Our political system has veered ever closer to inherited power on both sides of the aisle.

It turns out that, no, we didn’t “misunderestimate” President Bush when it came to competence in any number of areas.

It wasn’t enough just to be a president’s son. And look out for round two: Bush’s dad was on Fox News recently, stumping for his son Jeb to be, yes, president.

Meanwhile, New York is considering Caroline Kennedy for ex-Presidential spouse Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat primarily because she’s, um, you know, a Kennedy.

Obama is an exception, but it seems most of the potential replacements for his appointees are, like Kennedy, famous primarily for their familial relations.

A nation that rebelled against a demented monarch should know better.

2. Some things really are priceless. Those MasterCard ads got it right, but mostly for the wrong reasons.

We’ve spent the past two decades turning everything into a financial commodity.

Houses were flipped; mortgages siphoned and bundled; anything that could be bet on (in a casino or on Wall Street), was – with all the real action in the side bets. This is all insanity – you can’t, or shouldn’t, commodify everything. Houses are homes, not ATMs; bodies are temples, not the Federal mint.

Ironically, even the financial world couldn’t put a price on the sliced-and-diced “assets” it had created. Fannie, Freddie, and Lehman wound up basically priceless.

In a flash, a whole worldview built around putting a price on everything bankrupted itself, literally as well as morally.

We need to elevate our game a little above the bottom line in the future.

3. Reality isn’t just for TV. Did anyone notice that the most monstrous public fictions were told during the very heyday of “reality TV?”

The Bush White House famously embraced a “faith-based” approach and scoffed, like Henry Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” at what they sneeringly called “reality-based” decision-making.

We then suffered the pain when faith in Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, or Brownie at FEMA, or Alan Greenspan and other false gods of finance, turned out to be horribly misplaced.

All the “bubbles” of recent years depended on a denial of common sense – just ask Bernie Madoff’s scammed clients.

One of the highest priorities of the new era, then, should be a bracing dose of reality in our political and economic realms.

4. Things can, and will, fall apart. The dominant image of this decade is collapse: Enron; dot-bombs; Twin Towers; Baghdad; New Orleans; bridges; water mains; Wall Street; networks; newspapers; Constitutional checks and balances.

Whatever isn’t being built up wisely, instead comes apart at the seams.

Can the center, or the centrists, hold? Probably the key test of the Obama administration – and the nation as a whole – is whether or not we can engineer lasting fixes to the core problems that were created or ignored during the party-hardy unreality daze that preceded it.

If not, expect a lot more of the unthinkable and more devastating falls like the last one.

- John Knox is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography