More often than not, opportunity, rather than intrinsic greatness, makes people great. America's current troubles, many of which are global, have provided our generation with the opportunity for greatness. The things that have made Americans successful in the past will make our generation successful and bring us through our current crisis.
We have concrete assets that will continue to make us prosperous: Our infrastructure (though in need of an update); our institutions (unfortunately not our financial regulatory institutions), public and private; and our land.
We have cultural assets that will continue to make us prosperous: The American belief in a meritocracy; American individualism, the American desire (not that it is unique to America) to be more successful than your parents; and American optimism.
As Winston Churchill said, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they've tried everything else." A lot has been tried and the time for the right thing is here.
-- Ottavio Siani
The progressive movement should change in emphasis only. Let’s find and emphasize issues where the two movements agree, like social justice and environmental protection. With issues where there is a traditional disagreement, like abortion, let's emphasize the common ground that exists. Instead of emphasizing a woman's right to choose, we should emphasize the common goal of preventing unwanted pregnancies, for example. Avoiding ideological arguments and replacing them with pragmatic ones will more successfully court social conservative voters and more effectively make the progressive case.
This strategy has important electoral implications. In electoral contests broadening your appeal seems like a logical strategy to me. Remember, President Bush's first victory came on the back of campaign run on compassionate conservatism. If progressives can present themselves as candidates who social conservative voters are willing to lose too (people who will fight to reduce the number of abortions for example) then progressives will have a much easier time winning.
-- Ottavio Siani
I have sympathy for President Bush, our first Business School President (A graduate from Harvard Business School no less). By way of his father’s network and influence he came to know Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Richard Pearl among others, as the best foreign policy minds the United States had to offer. So logically he asked them to serve with him and take part in the highest levels of his decision-making apparatus.
Early in his presidency the attacks of September 11th provided him with power few presidents have ever acquired. These “great minds,” with the exception of Colin Powell who was excluded from Bush’s inner circle for dissenting and ultimately fired, came to him and told him that if he chose to he could use his new found power to topple dictators allowing democracy to spring forth from freed peoples. In essence, he was told that if he was bold enough his legacy could be one of a man who through temporary military action created a lasting peace in the Middle East and the world at large. The temptation of such a legacy turned out to be too great to bear.
The president’s role is a managerial one. There is not enough time for study and research. He or she must create an organizational structure that funnels the right information to the top allowing for good decision-making. It follows then that having a business school degree would help a president be successful.
I have not been to business school but I assume that they teach their students how to manage large organizations. In my research on what they teach in business school I have come across a business principal that I imagine they teach on the first day of any management class: in any decision making process, disagreement is good. If it so happens that everyone agrees, force someone to disagree. There is no introductory course for presidents but if there were this basic principal should be included.
History proves the importance of this lesson as well. Lincoln, touted by many as our greatest president, took this basic business school lesson to heart. Upon his inauguration he appointed his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, who were against going to war with the south, to his cabinet. These dissenting voices no-doubt helped Lincoln refine his arguments and think through his toughest decisions.
President elect Obama is not a graduate from a business school but I hope that he internalizes this principal (his appointments suggest that he has). We live in a complex world. The temptation to simplify it in an attempt to make decisions easier is great. I hope our next president heeds the advice that all business schools offer that our current business school president seemed to miss.
-- Ottavio Siani
"We must patiently explain why taxing or regulating noble things (like work, saving, and entrepreneurial risk-taking) means you’ll get less of what makes America great and why subsidizing other things (like idleness and single parenthood) means you’ll get more of the destructive behaviors that ultimately will drag us down."
— An excerpt from a piece in the National Review by the vice president of government relations for the Heritage Foundation.
Before beginning, I would like to re-publish an Adam Smith quote brought to my attention in Walter Lamberson’s response to last weeks question: "Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things." I find these two ideas to be the solid foundation from which most conservative arguments are made and the two ideas that most easily highlight the inconsistencies in the conservative agenda.
Fiscally speaking, conservatives seemingly aspire to use the state and its coffers to accomplish a lot more than both of these principals suggest they should. Maybe it is just that the only Republican presidency I have truly experienced has been that of President Bush, but I do think that the below cartoon is representative:
Furthermore, I find that these principles -- especially the second one -- suggest that people should be left with a great degree of freedom. Combining this notion with social conservatism seems completely inconsistent. The state should not tell you how to run you business, or spend you money but should tell you who to marry, how to make love, and structure your life? That doesn’t make sense to me.
A further inconsistency in conservatives’ and the Republican Party’s agenda is their lack of support for excellent, free public education and health care. Let's assume that we do not subsidize these services and leave them to the free market, which seems to be the conservative position. Will the free market provide superb health care and education for all people? Of course not, it will provide a tiered level of both with the better services costing more. Therefore, if you are born into a poor family your education and health services will be worse than they will be for people with money, handicapping a portion of our population and squandering some of our human potential. If the first quote is correct, and we chose to subsidize them, won’t we have a healthier and ore educated population? Won’t this population be more productive, and more able to carry a state to “the highest degree of opulence?”
Essentially, I am compelled by these arguments but I believe that conservatives and the Republican Party that they support fail to live up them. If they begin to, as I hope they do, choosing whom to vote for might actually become a difficult task.
-- Ottavio Siani
If I were Obama (yes, I added that to the question), I would use the money to publicly close Guantanamo Bay. I would try the people still held at Guantanamo Bay in U.S. courts and run the risk of releasing potential terrorists due to lack of evidence. I would offer compensation to those who are not proven guilty and consequently released. I would hold a public denunciation of torture and make an epic speech about the thin line between darkness and the light of civilization. I would even drop at least one heavy-handed Heart of Darkness reference. (For example: We must not "surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge" and let "the horror... the horror" of extremism push us away from the light into the dark corners of our humanity.)
Today's most pressing issues—the economic crisis, Islamic extremism, rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, and global warming—are global issues. Not a single one of these issues can or should be solved unilaterally. To successfully tackle these problems, we need support. We need to make sure that when we make sacrifices, as we already have and will continue to do, their benefits are compounded. Guantanamo Bay gives credence, for good reason, to the view that the United States' only true objective is to get and keep power. Shutting it down and admitting our errors would go a long way to restoring our much-needed credibility.
-- Ottavio Siani
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