That Used To Be Us

Friedman and Mandelbaum in their book, That Used To Be Us, are convinced that, as the Baby Boomer Generation supplanted the Greatest Generation, America began to suffer from an insidious erosion of our values.  Because that erosion of values happened incrementally, we did not appreciate its corrosive effects until the housing bubble burst in 2008.

The authors believe that America has come unstuck from its core values.  We have forsaken long-term investment and delayed gratification for a get-it-now-while-you-can lifestyle.  We have lost confidence in the authority of the institutions in our society that have previously been our leaders, especially in enabling us to take collective action in the face of huge challenges, and finally they believe that the nation is losing its sense of shared national purpose.

The United States used to be the best nation in the world for business of any type.  Our open markets, legal system, property rights, financial system, and robust investment in research and development made us the envy of the world.  But now the American people in ever-larger numbers believe that is all slipping away.

American Exceptionalism is under assault.  Simply asserting our supremacy does not sustain it.  The inadequacy of our ability to meet the four challenges that Friedman and Mandelbaum describe, globalization, the IT revolution, our debt and deficit, and our appetite for fossil fuels, paint a bleak portrait indeed.  The authors argue that, “not enough Americans seem to understand the first two and too many want to deny the necessity of addressing the second two”.

All of this is made significantly worse by the fact that our political system has broken down.  It’s paralyzed in partisan rancor.  Our two political parties are both deeply and closely divided.  Because of that reality we are caught in a cul-de-sac in which we bounce back and forth between the extreme positions of both the Democrats and the Republicans.  It used to be the case that “wave” elections where one party annihilated the other were infrequent.  Not so, any more. The Democrats pounded the Republicans in 2006 and 2008.  The GOP returned the favor in 2010.  And now it looks like both parties may be in for a shellacking in 2012.

But the only way to address the problems we face, reining in our exploding debt, creating an educational system that equips our young people with the tools that will enable them to compete and lead in the 21^st century, drilling for more oil and gas while imposing a carbon tax, and reforming the tax code and raising the taxes that will be required to restore our supremacy, can only be accomplished by combining the best of both the Left and the Right.

Friedman and Mandelbaum believe that one way or another America is going to be shocked into this painful and sacrificial reality.  They believe that either world markets or Mother Nature will administer the shock in a brutal and unpredictable way or it will come from the middle of the American political spectrum.  They hope it will be the latter.  So should we all.

LeRoy Goldman

October 6, 2011

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