Let's Get Over the Pessimism and Get a Leader Who Will Inspire!
Opinion from Michael Barone of US News and World Report that looks at the hopefulness of much of the Third World as it comes to their expectations of the future. It’s actually quite amazing to me for people to be accusing President Bush of being the worse President ever, when our economy is not in a recession and the stock market has recently reached new highs. There are serious challenges ahead from needing to reduce reliance on Middle East oil, to one of my favorite pet peeves, the Social Security and Medicare spending explosion that will be hitting us when the Baby Boomers start retiring. That said, this isn’t the Great Depression or the Civil War. This isn’t even Vietnam. Things are challenging because those challenges are so amorphous and hard to get a grip on. It was easy for people to understand (though not nearly so easy to accomplish) staring down goose stepping Nazis and nuclear missile brandishing Soviets. Terrorists who evaporate into civilian populations or are cells among us along with possible pandemics, global warming, and spiraling social spending are harder to deal with because the imagery is vague. All that said, aren’t we better off than when we came within hours of nuclear annihilation as during the Cuban Missile Crisis? I sure think so. Context is important. Knowing how dire things have been in the past is important. I am very concerned about our future, not as much from the external threats but from the internal decay that takes place within that allows the external to win battles they never should have won. In many ways we need to combat the Ward Churchills among us and constantly trumpet the positives. We need to renew our faith in ourselves, not our government and certainly not the “global community” writ large, but each and every one of us as individuals. Faith in ourselves will give us perspective and get us back to rolling up or sleeves and doing what must be done rather than whining about what can be done for us.
I find this article a good companion piece that focuses on the cynicism of our politics today and the need for a Tocquevillian leader to emerge.
I find this article a good companion piece that focuses on the cynicism of our politics today and the need for a Tocquevillian leader to emerge.
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