{"id":131,"date":"2010-01-31T11:45:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-31T11:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2010\/01\/31\/131\/"},"modified":"2010-04-17T15:33:30","modified_gmt":"2010-04-17T20:33:30","slug":"131","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=131","title":{"rendered":"IS AMERICA LOOKING FOR A \u201cMAN ON HORSEBACK\u201d?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just read James Fallow’s article \u201cHow America Can Rise Again\u201d<\/a> in the Jan\/Feb Atlantic Magazine, which provides a good summary of the sorry state of politics and government in America today. Fallows wrote his article before the recent victory of Republican Scott Brown in the election for the late, great Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts, and probably was finishing his article as Republican candidates pulled surprising upsets in the New Jersey and Virginia governor’s races last November. Over the past few years, our political system has seen quite a few upsets and surprises, led by Barack Obama’s primary victory over Hilary Clinton, who had previously been considered a shoo-in. And then Obama trounced GOP candidate John McCain in the general election, a surprising turn when you consider the clean victory that the Republicans gained in the Bush vs. Kerry presidential race four years before. It’s all quite exciting for us political sports fans; it’s quite a spectacle. But is it good for the country?<\/p>\n

Some people say that it’s just a function of the candidates involved; Obama has all that charisma, Scott Brown also has \u201cthe look\u201d and the everyman image (with his pickup truck), and most of the losers involved just did not run good races. They came on to the public like, well, like losers (Martha Cokeley, Jon Corzine, etc.). It’s just an interesting coincidence that all of this back-and-forth between parties and candidate platforms has happened in the course of two or three years. <\/p>\n

Obviously, I don’t agree. I think that a lot of Americans have become disgusted with the state of our leadership and government over the past 5 to 10 years. Yes, the economy is the 500 pound gorilla in the room right now; when unemployment hits 10 percent and mortgage foreclosures hit record highs, many people are unhappy. But I think it goes beyond that; or shall we say, I don’t think it’s all going to ‘go away’ once the economy gets better. We seem to have a lot of problems these days that have become resistant to political solutions, something like penicillin-resistant diseases. <\/p>\n

In New Jersey, for instance, there was a big push two or three years ago to \u201cdo something\u201d about rapidly rising property tax rates. There were a lot of newspaper articles and committees and legislation proposals, but once the dust settled, basically nothing happened. We are now seeing something like this on the national level regarding health care. It’s starting to look as though the dust is going to settle with basically nothing being done on that. (Deja vu all over again, for those who remember Hilary Clinton in 1994). And then there’s the growing public debt crisis, not just on the federal level but increasingly on the state level; California is wavering near bankruptcy, and New Jersey is not far behind. And then of course there was the government sleeping at the switch throughout the 00’s as warning signs came in about the dangers of crazy financial practices regarding real estate mortgage lending. Oh, and don’t forget about all those terrorist warning signals that got ignored before Sept. 11, 2001. And before Dec. 25, 2009.<\/p>\n

Want more? OK, how about the public infrastructure crisis? A lot of our highway bridges and sewage systems and schools are in pretty bad shape; but to fix them, we would have to either raise taxes (which the public hates with a vengeance given its cynical distrust of today’s leadership) or incur even more debt. And then there’s the continuing decline in public funding for basic research; the American economy has adapted to huge changes over the past 20 or 30 years (e.g., the rise of China and India) because of all the new companies and industries that got started based on research done back in the 1960’s and 70’s. If we continue to cheap-out on basic research today, then our economy is going to stagnate in the 2020’s and 30’s. <\/p>\n

Even more? OK, how about energy independence? That would require a lot of technology development with governmental help, akin to the Apollo moon-landing project of the 1960s. But such government help is not forthcoming; whatever help is available will be channeled into the more fashionable \u201cgreen jobs\u201d arena. This is great, but global warming is not a clear-and-present danger, whereas over-dependence on Middle Eastern oil and the nasty side-effects that it brings (Islamic radicalism, terrorism, nuclear brinksmanship with Iran, never-ending US military involvement in Afghanistan and maybe Iraq) definitely is. <\/p>\n

The big question is, are these problems beyond the capacity of our democratic government system, such as it is today? American-style Democracy has always had its problems; there was the Civil War and WW1, the socialist tumult of the early labor movement, the Great Depression and Pearl Harbor, then the Cold War and Vietnam. But somehow America muddled through and eventually got back its groove after all of these. Our economy was set back many times, but somehow things held together and after a decade or so there were new jobs and opportunities. The middle class continued to grow, and things kept on getting better in general. Should we just relax and assume that everything will be fine once again? Or is something different this time?<\/p>\n

I have been guilty of mis-applying the \u201cFall of the Roman Empire\u201d paradigm<\/a> to our present situation, i.e. saying that America’s time of world power and greatness is coming to an end just as Rome’s time had come by the fourth and fifth centuries. In his article, Fallows debunks this simplistic analysis. But I still can’t help but wonder if we are going through something like what Rome went through in the last half of the first century BCE. I.e., the gradual transition from a semi-democratic, oligarchic republic to a monarchical empire. Although many Romans resisted the ‘rise of the Caesars’ and defended the republic, most of the educated class agreed that the Roman geopolitical and economic system had become too complex for the old system of Senate-based rule. They agreed that a strongman was needed to get done what needed to be done. Julius Caesar got a little too haughty about being that strongman (and thus the Ides of March); but Augustus Caesar had an Obama-like finesse that made most people happy about the transition to tyranny. <\/p>\n

And it appeared to be the right decision, at least for 250 years or so. The Empire grew, the economy grew, things got built, trade expanded, new cities arose, and there were more schools, more education, and more culture (along with more nasty, vulgar stuff like gladiator contests). After a while, though, the continual fighting over who would be the next big man (while the barbarians on the fringes got their act together) did the western Empire in. <\/p>\n

Is the American populace subject to the same temptations today that the Romans faced twenty or thirty years before the birth of Jesus? Would we be willing to put our trust in an increasingly strong President and weaken our own Senate and jurists (read Supreme Court) over time? Some liberals, disgusted with how the US Senate has clogged up President Obama’s cap-and-trade legislation and health care reform, have called for limitations to the Senate’s power. They’re not too happy with the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on corporate political speech, either. One of the most prominent liberal commentator, Tom Friedman, recently expressed his admiration<\/a> for China’s “reasonably enlightened” autocracy and its effectiveness in a “flat world”, versus our messy hyper-partisan democracy.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, Barack Obama is NOT an Octavian (Augustus) Caesar. He’s too much of an academic; he doesn’t have t
\nhe political guts to call for a sugar-coated Presidential power coup. And we’re darn lucky in that regard, given his golden tongue; he might just talk enough people into it, if he wanted to. Still, the political ground is becoming increasingly fertile for such a strongman to emerge eventually. <\/p>\n

Fallows, in his article, ponders this idea. He talks about a proposal that good old Ralph Nader<\/a> put forth, for a plutocratic coup whereby a consortium of Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Ted Turner and maybe Michael Bloomberg or T. Boone Pickens all come together and suspend the Constitution (in a nice way, of course \u2013 there would still be elected representatives whom they would consult in an \u201cadvise and consent\u201d mode) and then kick butt to get things done. He also mulls over a 1992 article by an Air Force lieutenant (written as an academic exercise) called \u201cThe Origins of the American Military Coup of 2010\u201d<\/a>. But then Fallows concludes, \u201cwe can’t really hope for a coup\u201d. <\/p>\n

Hmmm, it doesn’t sound like he’s entirely against it, though. Perhaps Fallows was just trying to be ironic, but he doesn’t seem vehemently opposed to an enlightened dictatorship happening in America. (And he concludes his article saying that we should just leave things alone and hope for the best. That’s all he offers on how to make America “rise again”, although he also longs to tinker with the Senate.) Fallows is the kind of intellectual commentator whose opinion matters. If by some set of coincidences, another Obama-like orator and political genius started a political movement in our country calling for a \u201cstrong presidency\u201d and a \u201creview of our Constitutional understandings\u201d, we would rely on people like Fallows to put the fire out, before it starts spreading amidst a public disgusted with how things are going. <\/p>\n

If in five years our economy is growing again and unemployment is back down around 5 or 6% and working-class people are buying first-homes again, then this is all a moot point. Our last major economic downturn was in 1981, almost 30 years ago. Our economy absorbed a lot of changes and shocks over that time, including the horrible attack of Sept. 11. And yet it grew and kept unemployment relatively low; this only came to an end after a complicated financial and real-estate system meltdown. If we patch things up and the next 30 years go like the previous ones, then America will be fine; our Constitution and democracy will muddle through. But if oil keeps on getting more expensive and India and China keep on growing and innovating; and if we put most of our wealth into expensive health-care for an aging population while ratcheting back on the education, infrastructure and research spending needed to help the future generations; and if we keep on spending beyond our means (either privately or publicly, or both) while borrowing from those upcoming world powers, well . . . then all bets are off!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just read James Fallow’s article \u201cHow America Can Rise Again\u201d in the Jan\/Feb Atlantic Magazine, which provides a good summary of the sorry state of politics and government in America today. Fallows wrote his article before the recent victory of Republican Scott Brown in the election for the late, great Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1384,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions\/1384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}