We are now almost four years into the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression. For American workers, the financial weather report calls for more of the same: a continuing and destructive economic tornado followed by heavy showers of despair. During similar periods of dreadful economic times in our past, Americans could always take comfort in the fact that we had leaders - both public and private - who were "on the job." Such leaders would earnestly put aside partisan differences in order to fashion together concrete solutions to our nation's most pressing problems in a manner that put the interests of the many ahead of the interests of a special few.
But today, that patriotic sense of duty that served as motivation for the great leaders of our past has now gone lacking. If you are seeking a beacon of hope in today's tumultuous and uncertain world, the last thing you would do is to turn on your television and settle in to watch a Capitol Hill hearing. Because if you do, you will be left asking yourself one all important question:
Where have all the leaders gone?
Day in and day out we listen to the voices in Washington DC, eager for any sort of acknowledgment of the suffering and pain caused by an unemployment crisis that is destroying families and whole communities. We strain to hear of new and innovative 21st century ideas that will pull us out of our economic morass and put Americans back to work in jobs and careers that pay a family-sustaining wage, and place the American economy back on track to sustained and shared prosperity. But inevitably, much of what we hear every day seems dispiritingly predictable.
Is this the best America can produce? Aren't great crises supposed to bring forth great men and women?
Where are the leaders?
Perhaps we are simply reaping what we have sown. Because for the past few election cycles, and especially in 2010 when the faux populist "tea party" made its presence felt, it seems that the America electorate has proclaimed its preference, for the most part, for a government at all levels that is comprised of anti-intellectuals, stumbling technocrats, and outright nitwits whose solutions either fall short, go too far in the wrong direction, are not even remotely connected to the critical issues at hand, or are just plain head-scratching bizarre. It's enough to make you want to pull the covers back over your head.
The old adage, “Every nation has the government it deserves” is nowhere more visibly apparent today than in the United States of America. Witness the current crop of plundering circus clowns vying for the Republican nomination for president.
Regressive politics and ruinous political gridlock have left America virtually paralyzed. The collapse of the housing bubble/mortgage crisis continues, as does the financial meltdown that resulted. Incomes for 90% of Americans continue to lag behind inflation; the middle class is destitute. Disastrous climate change looms ever closer; energy and food prices spiral ever upward; and the number of uninsured Americans grow as the health insurance system continues to financially ravage the very patients it portends to save.
And looming above all else is the unemployment crisis. The national unemployment rate remains at 9.2%. In the construction industry, it is 16.3% nationwide.
Our leaders have passed a modest stimulus bill that simply prevented the American economy from going completely down a black hole. They extended the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest among us. They are on the verge of passing new trade deals that will heap even more economic devastation on the American middle class. They just approved a deal that will allow Mexican trucks to travel freely on America's highways. They are seeking the outright extinction of pensions and unions and collective bargaining rights throughout the land, as well as any laws or policies designed to protect American workers and their standards of living. And most notably, they have shoveled trillions of dollars of taxpayer money into greedy hands of Wall Street banks and financial institutions who were the prime culprits of our economic devastation in the first place.
And yet we still have 9.2% unemployment across the land.
Where are the leaders?
Two of the most conspicuous lessons that we learned from the financial meltdown and its aftermath -- that the continued existence of financial institutions deemed "too big to fail" seriously threatens the nation's economy and fiscal well-being, and that our financial regulators do not possess the tools and wherewithal to oversee the industry -- appear to have been forgotten or have never been learned. Because today, those lessons are being cast aside by lawmakers eager to do the bidding of the financial industry in watering down any and all enforcement mechanisms designed to prevent similar catastrophes from occurring in the future.
Where are the leaders?
The question that our nation's leaders should be asking, in light of the fact that bailout recipient Goldman Sachs reported 2010 profits of $13.4 billion (AFTER paying out $16.2 billion in bonuses and compensation) is this: In an economy as horrible as ours, with every factory town between New York and Los Angeles experiencing hollowed-out devastation akin to something out of a "Mad Max" movie, where in the hell did Wall Street's eye-popping profits come from, exactly?
Did Goldman go from bailout city to $13.4 billion in the black because, as Chairman Lloyd Blankfein suggests, its "performance" was just that awesome? Two short years after they were minutes away from bankruptcy, how are these fortunate few not only back on their feet again, but hauling in bonuses at the same rate they were during the bubble?
The answer to that question is basically twofold: They raped the taxpayer, and they raped their clients.
Where are the leaders?
And now we must endure the current spectacle that is the debt limit negotiations, which is nothing more than a hostage taking being perpetrated by extreme radicals who remarkably control the levers of power in our federal government.
Where are the leaders?
And if that weren't troubling enough, on July 7 the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives gave up on the American economy and on the United States’ role as a global economic leader. In announcing a multi-year outline of a Surface Transportation Re-Authorization bill, Republican leaders are intending to slash transportation investments by more than 30 percent below current funding levels, which will, in the first year alone, cost America 490,000 jobs.
These cuts will result in lost productivity as millions of Americans sit in unnecessary traffic jams; manufactured goods and agricultural products that are not able to get to market in a timely fashion; dangerous roads that result in needless deaths, injuries, and property damage; and a continued erosion of state and local economies.
Where are the leaders?
Where are America’s “great” leaders? Where are the Lincolns, Roosevelts, Eisenhowers and Kennedys of today? Where is our generation's Daniel Patrick Moynihans and Lowell Weickers - thoughtful and reasoned leaders who did not view "compromise" as a dirty word. Why are we not seeing more enlightened business leaders like Jim Sinegal of COSTCO, or Tony Hsieh of ZAPPOS - leaders who are obsessed with delivering value and happiness not only to their customers, but also to their employees.
Where is the respect for the labor leaders of today, who are continuing the legacy of men like George Meany and Lane Kirkland; whose vision of eradicating communism off the face of the Earth set the stage for the emergence of Lech Walesa and the Polish Solidarity movement and the destruction of the Berlin Wall? President Ronald Reagan's oft-cited quote, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" would have fallen flat if not for the work of these two American trade union giants to bolster the emergence of free trade unions behind the Iron Curtain.
Where are the leaders?
Robert Louis Stevenson once said that "politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary."
Throughout America, you must be adequately and professionally trained before you can legally be employed in responsible occupations involving the safety and security of other human beings - occupations like driving a train; flying a plane; or constructing and managing a nuclear power plant. But anyone with moneyed connections can hold public office— and with it the responsibility over the lives and welfare of thousands, maybe millions of Americans. There simply are no standards for education and qualification when it comes to politicians (see: Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman).
Where are the leaders?
The values we share as Americans are not necessarily the values of any political party, but instead are derived from the hearts and souls of our people. With the election of Barack Obama in 2008, we thought we were on the precipice of a necessary of a right-wing conservative orthodoxy that was thrust upon the core values of our nation. The conservative ideas and ideals of the traditionalists may not look so bad on paper to people who wear tri-cornered hats and carry around copies of The Federalist Papers, but in practice and in reality they have been an unmitigated disaster for the American middle class.
As for President Obama, he has sincerely tried to claim the mantle of "adult leadership." He was dealt a terrible hand upon taking office and has tried to address serious problems in a serious manner. But he, too, has shown a troubling lack of urgency when it comes to the day to day problems that afflict the American middle class; especially our enduring jobs crisis. You know, sometimes your principles must trump your short-term political and electoral interests.
Where are the leaders?
Where are the great thinkers and compromisers who understand that the interests of the broad American middle class are central to the health of nation as a whole?
The world is in chaos. There are riots breaking out all over Europe. Major national economies are on the verge of collapse - including our own.
Gradually it becomes clear. This is not just a global economic crisis. It's a global leadership crisis.
Where are the leaders?
Everywhere you look, it seems that the men and women in positions of power are receding. Once there were titans running the financial and business worlds, lions of the legislature, great statesmen astride the global stage, individuals who weren't just victims of history but who bent it to their wills.
How sad is it that in America we have been reduced to having Jon Stewart, a comic from New Jersey and the host of a fake news show, to stand in as the nation's moral conscience and call out those responsible for the collapse of journalistic, political and economic values in America.
Where are the leaders?
How did we get here? Well, I have my own theory.
After Vietnam and Watergate and the oil crises of the 1970s, many people bought into the disjointed idea that "government is the problem." They believed that efficient markets would tell us what and who should succeed. The values of business -- profit above all, wealth as the prime measure of success, short term gains over long term investment-- became American society's values. We came to expect too much of our business leaders and too little of our political ones.
Then it all came undone. Bubble after bubble burst, first it was in emerging markets, then technology and, most recently, real estate. The income gap between the rich and the Middle Class now rivals historical extremes.
Where are the leaders?
But gradually, answers do emerge in times like these. Tough times force-feed innovation, while good ones often cultivate complacency. In each case, the leaders who succeeded looked beyond the crisis, beyond old ways, and found something new. They kept their eye on the post-crisis world. We can only hope that our current crop political leaders adopt the same mindset of applying innovative thinking to address the critical challenges of today.
In my wildest dreams, I would like to see the following law enacted as a way to motivate and cultivate new and innovative thinking. It would be affectionately known as the "What's Good for the Goose is Good for the Gander Act." The particulars are rather simple. For every moment that our nation's unemployment rate remains above 6% nationwide, no Member of Congress (or their staffs) shall be paid. They will also lose their health insurance coverage. And they will have all of their assets frozen. These restrictions would also apply to employees of the Executive and Judicial branches, and would include all political appointees. When the national unemployment rate exceeds 6% nationwide, I believe that Members of Congress ought to experience what it feels like to have to apply for, and subsist on, unemployment benefits - not to mention having to survive without health insurance coverage.
Another provision in this dream law would make it mandatory for all employees of the Executive, Congressional and Judicial branches of the federal government to have their children educated in public schools. Perhaps this would lessen the knee-jerk and misguided and misinformed reaction to punish and humiliate our nation's teachers.
The bottom line with this proposed legislation is straightforward: If you want to lead, show us you care.
In the end, a big part of the answer in our quest for leadership resides with the American public. We are the ones who will embrace the ideas and empower those who act on them. We are the ones who will decide what we accept or demand as the proper role of government, of markets and of America in the world. This will require more reason than emotion, more patience than impulse, more focus on core values than on economic value creation, more of a long-term investment orientation and less focus on instant gratification.
Where are the leaders?
We're waiting.