The president has only a few real duties. He must tell us truths we don`t want to hear. He must set goals. He must rally the country.
This is why we pay his salary.
He is not elected to sugarcoat, to deny, the hard realities of daily living. He is not elected to respond to long-term problems with short-term remedies that say: ”Here are your goodies. Elect me again.”
He is not elected to try to persuade us that the problem is caused by someone else, whether it be the Japanese, the irresponsible ways of Congresses and administrations past, or liberalism or conservatism or any other ism that might be convenient.
In a burst of warlike rhetoric, President Bush stared that great enemy called the recession straight in the face and said, ”This will not stand.”
What a great moment. What great television. My heart very nearly leaped out of my throat. But then, he outlined his plan. A short-term tax cut here, a little short-term incentive for investment there, less money withheld from your paycheck, big new tax benefits for the real estate industry. Accelerated depreciation. A rejiggered capital gains tax cut.
Spirits sank. Was this President Carter again? All details and no heart. Trees of ideas and no forest.
Where did he want the country to go? What does he have to say about the changing nature of work in a global economy? What happens when his neat little incentives disappear? Is making the deficit worse a good thing to do at this moment? Why do we really need such a large military in a world where the main threat has suddenly disappeared?
A million such questions went unanswered. What is the role of the government in the private economy in a world where the most successful economies are more activist than the United States? Why is our productivity so bad, and what should we do to improve it?
What can you say to a generation that doesn`t believe it will enjoy the same standard of living as its parents` generation?
You tell them the truth. You can`t rally them unless you do.
In these hard times, a president cannot fudge. You say there will be sacrifices required, the result of a huge budget deficit`s eating away much of the surplus capital we have to build the country. You say this is a bipartisan problem requiring a bipartisan solution.
You tell them that we can`t go back to the `80s, but you also say that we are laying the groundwork for something greater and grander with our sacrifices now. And, you say, these sacrifices do not have to be super-draconian, although no one should expect that they`ll be minimal, either. We might have to tighten our belts for years.
You tell them honestly that America has entered a new era in its economy where good jobs are harder to come by. You don`t tell them they are dumb and lazy as the Japanese do, but you tell them they must study harder and longer, and invest more in their job preparation.
You tell them that you are going to lead the way with school reform-not with hands-off policies, or halfway policies, but with a genuine revolution in the way America prepares its young people for work.
You tell them about exciting new technologies being worked on in the laboratories of the land and how these might develop into America`s industries of the future. You talk of how the government is going to ensure that adequate funds are directed into these technologies.
You level with them about costs and, for the most part, you talk of the long term. You have to understand that for most Americans, there is no difference between the long term and the short term anymore. To them, an economy that isn`t producing long-term jobs is a key reason to hold back on spending. To them, a government running up deeper debt for a measly tax cut is a reason for a deeper fear of the future.
Americans are pretty smart people. They know how to hedge their bets when they are in trouble, just as the people in Chicago`s futures markets do. They`ve bought their futures contracts in gloom because no one has given them reason to buy them in hope.
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Show them a reasonable route to a better future and the recession will end overnight. Stop playing around with what Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp so artfully and correctly called gimmicks. Kemp, unfortunately, was dressed down for saying the emperor had no clothes. Such is the state of discourse in the nation`s capital.
Bush`s economic program isn`t bad. Stacked up against the ideas floating around on Capitol Hill, it might even be superior, considering that Democrats, too, are wedded to the short term. But that doesn`t make the the president`s plan adequate to deal with the nation`s economic problem.
One thing that has distinguished the current recession is that people have suddenly become alert to a longer-term economic threat. It has been gnawing at them since that fateful day back in 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
That`s when Americans looked at the future-and didn`t like what they saw. It`s still the way they look at the future, unless someone gives them a reason to believe differently. That`s what presidents are for, and they have to be convincing.