One of the main issues of this campaign will be whom to ”blame” for the current economic situation. There are plenty of villains, of course, including ourselves and our culture of consumption.
But this is a republic, not a pure democracy, and so it`s all right not to be too tough on ourselves. By setting up this form of government and by putting themselves on a pedestal, politicians have invited us to shift a good deal of the responsibility to them.
So it`s completely fair to start casting about for targets of our recrimination. To begin with, you will note that George Bush, Bill Clinton and Congress are trying to help us find the guilty parties by blaming each other for today`s mess. It`s all part of the same game.
Deep down, one would like to discover the ”root” of our economic distress. If one could find that, it might be easier to assess blame. By
”root,” I don`t mean exercising the art of the obvious, like the American politician who once proclaimed that unemployment was caused by the fact that too many people were out of work.
I also don`t mean shifting the blame to those who, like us, might be acting in their own economic self-interest. An example is blaming Arab oil producers for the high price of gasoline, when our energy appetite is voracious.
Very often it is how we live, or how we expect to live, that lies at the heart of our problems, until it`s made clear that we can`t live that way anymore. One of government`s responsibilities is to curb our natural tendencies to have everything, to make clear to us that growth has its limits, to bring excesses to a quick halt.
The U.S. government is woefully deficient in this regard-at all levels. When the savings-and-loan scandal burst into the open, investigations made clear that the Reagan and Bush administrations and Democrats and Republicans in Congress all were guilty of feeding this enormous monster. It was officially sanctioned malfeasance. They all took campaign contributions from the industry and, by their action and inaction, caused a massive raid on the Treasury.
We would like to blame someone for this. In all honesty and with complete frustration, one has to say the number of wrongdoers in both parties is so great that we are left blaming ”the system” that let it happen, including lax regulation in both the Bush and Reagan administrations, greedy politicians in Congress, indifferent presidents, and opportunistic bankers who did not fear regulators.
Let`s take another tough one. Who can one blame for the fact that America has become less competitive in many of its key industries? I`m sure that if we discovered a specific person, there would be no end to the abuse heaped upon him, or her.
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But, on closer examination, one finds a list of causes so long that affixing blame on one, or a few individuals, is well-nigh impossible.
Surely stupid management decisions is one, and high labor costs another. But one can add to that the cost of money in the U.S., the lack of savings and investment, poor education of workers, the federal deficit, the wrong tax incentives, overregulation in some cases, the short-term focus of our capital markets, the global economy, and predatory practices by our economic competitors.
Once again, one is left criticizing ”the system.” It`s too diffuse and complicated for a country that likes to search out and exorcise specific economic demons. It leaves us totally unsatisfied in our quest to pinpoint responsibility and to extract some revenge.
But the fact that I am left criticizing a ”system” tells me that it is devoid of something important. That something is leadership. I conclude that we have two separate governments, one headed by George Bush that administers ceremony and the daily affairs of state and dabbles in politics, vetoes and unachievable policy proposals.
The other is a government that is supposed to attend to the economy, and all its changing problems and circumstances. It is a government that is supposed to make hard choices and to push for reforms that will make the American economy competitive in a world becoming increasingly hostile to U.S. interests.
At present, there is a vacancy at the top of this separate government of the economy-has been for some time. It has been put on automatic pilot, in hopes that things will somehow magically work out. It does not adapt, react, encourage, punish or decide. It just sits there, hoping no one notices that nobody is in charge.
No wonder Americans are frustrated and worried. The recession surely lowered their expectations, but the absence of economic leadership has left them without a clue on what their expectations should be for the future. Without some guidance, without some economic road map, they have retreated into pessimism.
For one, I am tired of this automatic pilot, and so are most Americans. The emerging era of competition demands an activist President of the Economy, a commander-in-chief of money who will help us understand that we can`t have everything but who can show us the way to a more prosperous economy.
This will be a challenging job for any aspirant brave enough to accept the responsibility. Any takers?