What to Make of This Mess …
Panic is the opposite of euphoria, and remembering how awful this moment in time feels can make us all sensitive to the hubris that drives companies, individuals and government to irrationality. It now seems all too clear: the 0% down, the delayed payments, the negative national savings rate; and yet in the moment it was too good to pass up.
This is, in many ways, the essence of what makes us human, that our reach always exceeds our grasp, and these crashes may have within them the very evolutionary seeds of what drives us forward. Without doubt, human history shows overall progress as science, human rights, justice, economics and spirituality have increased our collective standards. Yet within humanity’s arc, our over-reaching leads to extremely painful corrections, one of which we at the very early stages of.
That this all happens in advance of a presidential election makes for that much more of a loaded environment, and we would all do well to remember that politics usually follows economics, and that some of the darkest moments in our collective histories have come following sharp economic contractions. Now is the time for balance, pragmatism, and thoughtfulness.
But it would be inadequate to think that this will be enough, and we miss much of the opporunity in these moments if we do not reflect on what to make of this mess. First, historical fundamentals – whether they be P/E ratios or euphemisms like “trees do not grow to the sky” – exist for a reason: they are cautions against pride. When history does change rapidly, it very rarely does so for good (count as proof of this the last century’s numerous political revolutions and the genocides they brought with them); similarly, when people tell us that “the business cycle is dead” we should discount their advice as we would a soothsayer. New ideas should be treated with caution, tested for their metal and asked to prove themselves on something more than promise.
Second, as a leader, choose wisely those things where you invest your limited capital. It will be impossible for historians to discuss this crisis without understanding it as a repudiation of the Bush Administration. A leader must understand his situation well enough to know when and where to spend his capital – regardless of whether this is financial, organizational, or interpersonal. They must have a clear hierarchy of priorities, a confidence that if they pick an important problem and solve it, the people they govern will reward him with more latitude to make even more fundamental change. As America’s involvement in Iraq shifted from one illogical argument to the next, the administration’s collective capital was lessened, and Bush as a leader was cheapened. While Bush attempted to push his way through traditional balance of power questions that have characterized American jurisprudence for two hundred years, he became a shallow representation of American ideals. And now that Presidential leadership is so needed – if only for a calming influence, but ideally to embrace an ideology of reform – it is nowhere to be found.
Third, the only way to understand this moment is at a historic time when the arc of America’s story changed. We need leaders who understand that America can stand proudly but equally with international peers, as opposed to leaders who think that it is wise to pursue the folly of no near-peer competition. We need leaders who are ready to help us make hard decisions, who have trained in ideas that matter and stand able to implement their vision when the people they lead are ready to be led. An excellent treatise on where America currently finds itself is Cullen Murphy’s Are We Rome?; it is worth considering if only for the cautionary reminder that we are little different from those who have come, and fallen, before us.
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“If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.”
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