We need leaders

I believe there are a few in government, trying their mightiest to govern wisely and reasonably and morally. But Peggy Noonan thinks we’re being governed by children. Callous children.

No one believes the bad time is over. No one thinks we’re entering a new age of abundance. No one thinks it will ever be the same as before 2008. Economists, statisticians, forecasters and market specialists will argue about what the new numbers mean, but no one believes them, either. Among the things swept away in 2008 was public confidence in the experts. The experts missed the crash. They’ll miss the meaning of this moment, too.

The biggest threat to America right now is not government spending, huge deficits, foreign ownership of our debt, world terrorism, two wars, potential epidemics or nuts with nukes. The biggest long-term threat is that people are becoming and have become disheartened, that this condition is reaching critical mass, and that it afflicts most broadly and deeply those members of the American leadership class who are not in Washington, most especially those in business….

This is historic. This is something new in modern political history, and I’m not sure we’re fully noticing it. Americans are starting to think the problems we are facing cannot be solved.

I had an interesting conversation with a doctor this week who used to be a somewhat regular guest on my radio show. He was a popular one because he had a very personal and caring approach to medicine, based on the premise that you have to be a participant in your own health recovery and part of that was having hope. He really listened to people, asked them questions to draw out their core stresses and concerns, and he gave them hope. After not talking with him for a long time, I looked him up this week. His first words to me were: “Where’s the hope?!” Everyone he talks to, he said, nearly all his patients especially, are worried and afraid and depressed because we are all facing so many huge problems right now and they seem insurmountable.

I mentioned this Peggy Noonan column.

Part of the reason is that the problems—debt, spending, war—seem too big. But a larger part is that our government, from the White House through Congress and so many state and local governments, seems to be demonstrating every day that they cannot make things better. They are not offering a new path, they are only offering old paths—spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us more healthy locally and nationally. And in the long term everyone—well, not those in government, but most everyone else—seems to know that won’t work. It’s not a way out. It’s not a path through.

The people seem to be more aware than the government, more aware of the nation’s vulnerabilities, that it can be harmed.

When I see those in government, both locally and in Washington, spend and tax and come up each day with new ways to spend and tax—health care, cap and trade, etc.—I think: Why aren’t they worried about the impact of what they’re doing? Why do they think America is so strong it can take endless abuse?

I think I know part of the answer. It is that they’ve never seen things go dark. They came of age during the great abundance, circa 1980-2008 (or 1950-2008, take your pick), and they don’t have the habit of worry. They talk about their “concerns”—they’re big on that word. But they’re not really concerned. They think America is the goose that lays the golden egg. Why not? She laid it in their laps. She laid it in grandpa’s lap.

They don’t feel anxious, because they never had anything to be anxious about. They grew up in an America surrounded by phrases—”strongest nation in the world,” “indispensable nation,” “unipolar power,” “highest standard of living”—and are not bright enough, or serious enough, to imagine that they can damage that, hurt it, even fatally.

We are governed at all levels by America’s luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they’re not optimists—they’re unimaginative.

Noonan ends her column saying they don’t even notice people are disheartened.

In a not altogether different column at First Things, James D. Conley ends his analysis of the critical health care debate almost the same.

For all of Congress’ public talk about “consensus building” and “consensus health care,” Washington has proved once again that hearing loss can be job-related. Most American Catholics, from people in the pews to pastors and bishops, want healthcare reform to work.

As, presumably, do most Americans in general.

But too many people in Washington don’t know how to listen, or don’t want to listen, or just don’t care.

Have you called your congressional representative lately? I called mine today. And at least the people who answered the phones for them were polite, they listened, they thanked me for calling, and I thanked them for noting my concerns. It’s a start, and it’s got to start with us.