Contrary to the current hype about the national debt, America's most pressing problem is a deficit of vision, not dollars.
Amid the hubbub of the mainstream media's horse-race reporting of the recent 2010 midterm elections, you can be excused for missing the significance of the fact that this was the third "wave election" we've had in a row. This kind of lurching "pinball politics," where control of Congress and the presidency bounces back and forth near-constantly is symptomatic of a lack of direction and visionary leadership by our top political figures.
Indeed, the winning political strategy of the day seems to be "the opposite of what we're doing now." In 2006, Bush-weary voters handed back control of Congress to the Democrats, and then this trend was taken to its natural conclusion in 2008, when "change we can believe in" catapulted the Democratic Party into the White House, leaving the rabidly recalcitrant Supreme Court as the sole bastion of conservatism in the federal government.
However, far from embarking down a path articulated by President Obama and the Democratic Party, this month, the electorate gave Republicans the biggest single-election gains in decades. Their winning message? A collection of anti-Obama goals, including "repeal and replace" the health care reform bill and ending stimulus spending.
When the two main schools of politics are "not Bush" and "not Obama," we know something is wrong. When we factor in other broken features of our political process like filibuster abuse and an abject lack of bipartisan collaboration, it is clear that our schizophrenic passing of power means that no one's policies will have a chance to succeed before being dismantled by the opposition.
What we are missing in this thicket of reactive "change" politics is a proactive vision for the future. While Obama had the best chance in recent years to establish such a vision, he failed to do so. While he has achieved a not altogether unimpressive collection of piecemeal changes, they have been unconnected by any kind of unifying narrative. In fact, he has been more than happy to finish up others' goals rather than articulate his own, like passing the health care reform that has eluded presidents for decades.
What makes this problem worse is that even once we escape this current crisis, we will have only jumped from the fire back into the relative safety of the frying pan.
The America of today faces enormous challenges, even once we return to "normal." We must adapt to the new global economy by establishing a preeminent place in emerging fields like clean energy, biotechnology and the ever-expanding electronics industry. Likewise, there are big questions to be answered about America's role in the new global balance of power now that China and India have emerged as nascent superpowers and Europe is rapidly unifying into a coherent superpower of its own. All of this is not to mention the need for fixing our money-driven electoral system and finding long-term solutions for the national debt and trade deficit.
None of these challenges are addressed by simply promising to do things differently from the person currently in office — they take long-term concerted action. Quickly changing course and grasping at different plans of action is a frequent mark of an organization or nation spiralling down into decline.
It's not as if America has failed to produce leaders to guide the nation through difficult times in the past. Franklin Roosevelt's vision of securing the "four freedoms" — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear— was so strong that not only did he lead America out of the Great Depression and establish countless programs such as Social Security and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, but he also permanently changed the expectations that Americans have of their government.
Similarly, while I vehemently oppose most of his policies, Ronald Reagan also was a bold and visionary leader. He identified what he saw as the problem America faced, which he took to be the government itself, and laid out a supply-side plan of less government regulation and lower taxation which would bring the country closer to his vision of a small-government America.
The remarkable strength of these presidents' visions is evident in the frequency with which contemporary politicians invoke their memories. Even after their deaths, they continue to inspire American politics. However, as John Judis suggests in his article "A Lost Generation," recent events suggest that "the United States may have finally lost its ability to adapt politically to the systemic crises that it has periodically faced."
We have a leadership vacuum waiting to be filled. If Obama refuses to step up to the task, then someone else must. This leader must articulate both his vision of America's future and the course of action that will realize it. As voters and citizens, let's stop settling for the reactive BS currently pervading American politics and demand true leadership.
Kurt Walters '11 is a philosophy, politics and economics concentrator from Charlottesville, Va. He can be contacted at kurt_walters @brown.edu.
