Rational Exuberance: The Optimistic Traveler
Posted on November 1, 2008
REVISION: The elections are over and for the first time America has a president that represents all of America and will do so to the rest of the world. I was at an election night party last night where we all toasted with pride that we could now go anywhere in the world and be proud again. Some even suggested wearing flag pins. I am now in a state of hyperoptimism. I think Barack Obama’s election will dramatically improve America’s standing in the world and set the stage for a new optimism and prosperity at home.
OK, I have been hoodwinked by optimism before. In college in the late 60s I wrote an airy-fairy political science essay proposing the notion that the communications satellite would link the world in a guitar-strumming harmonic convergence in which prejudice, war, aluminum siding salesmen and all manner of bad seed would be dug under by knowledge and truth. I found a C+ and the comment “naive†scrawled at the top of the paper.
I tried to make of a career of finding truth as a journalist, charging forward during the Watergate era with high ideals but leaving suffering from repetitive news injuries. I taught broadcast journalism at a university, finding that the glamor of being on TV was more important to my students than any duty to expose the truth. I, like others idealists of my generation, could not close the deal: the Summer of Love went up in a puff of hash and weed, Nixon’s Vice President Spiro Agnew, who resigned after being indicted for bribery, introduced “Joe Sixpack†as the leader of a pitchfork wielding mob storming the castle to rout out liberals, media who asked tough questions and any other “nattering nabob of negativism†who doubted his party’s motives.
And it worked, brilliantly.
Agnew, Reagan’s henchman Lee Atwater (aka Darth Vader) and his pal/protege Karl Rove re-branded a Republican Party that was once proudly elitist to that of Joe Sixpack and Joe the Plumber (nice try), refocusing the language of politics from real issues to so-called wedge issues such as guns, gays, and, when they could get away with it, race while intimidating news organizations who dared challenge them. I know, I almost lost a TV job over a comment about Agnew, being told by my boss that Nixon’s FCC was watching.
But, as my fairy godmother told me, “watch what you wish for,†to which I add “watch what you say, as it may become a self-fulfilling prophesy.†The once-noble party of Eisenhower, Rockefeller, George H.W. Bush and even the greatly hyped but overrated Ronald Reagan, was hijacked by a so-called “base,†represented by the villagers with clubs and pitchforks who turn up at Sarah Palin rallies shouting “communist,†“terrorist†and yes, the “n†word. A once respected but now flailing John McCain became a Manchurian Candidate, sipping the KoolAid of the same people who tried to destroy him in his race against He Whose Name Makes Us Cringe, embracing a strategy of divide and conquer, red or blue, “you are with me or with the terrorists .or with Karl Marx (who the hell under 50 can name the rest of Marx Brothers)?
But back to optimism. The election of Barack Obama will be the most positive turning point not only in American society but in the world since the end of World War II. As General Colin Powell said, “I think he is a transformational figure.” “He is a new generation coming … onto the world stage and on the American stage.â€
My take on this is as one who is fortunate enough to travel overseas regularly, not as a tourist, but to meet and speak, often intimately, with longtime friends: Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, …some devout, some not…all educated, none fundamentalist, is that much of the world is looking for an excuse to support America, that it still has high hopes for the US as a stabilizing force in a dodgy world, but not under a regime it regards as brutal, insensitive and not to be trusted. For many, Barack Obama is their American idol, the first candidate in recent memory who eschews divisive political bluster in favor of reasoned discourse. At a conference this spring in Sri Lanka, a particularly inspiring speaker was called “Obamaesque.†A new international Gallup poll says 27 percent of those surveyed support Obama while only 7 percent support McCain. These are not our enemies, mind you, but people from countries like Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany and, oh yes, our old demon France.
Why are these “foreigners†important? They represent a world that we depend upon as much as it depends upon us, that rises and falls with our stock market, that makes and consumes our goods, that gives and receives the pollutants spewed into into the air by our respective smokestacks, a world that is connected by mere hours by plane and nanoseconds by internet.
The rest of the world stood by America after 9-11, but was snubbed by the cocksure cowboy in the White House when he went it alone with his grand plan to secure the Middle East at gunpoint. America blew its chance at moral leadership. But now I share with much of the rest of the world the hope that Barack Obama affords the US another opportunity to bring trust and integrity to America’s tarnished brand.
I am optimistic that the election of Barack Obama will hasten the recovery of economies and world markets. Markets crave predictability, assurances that our economy and our morale will not be drained by bloody, useless wars or by stock market Ponzi schemes born of reckless deregulation. And Obama understands the idea that investing in green technology rather than throwing money at the stale old industries can create jobs and help make us prosperous. Today’s buzz phrase is “Green is black,†black meaning black ink i.e. profits. As one venture capitalist told me, “green†offers the opportunity to reinvent everything and make a pile of money in the process. Obama gets this. The dead dinosaurs in the Middle East, Anwar and Capitol Hill may finally rest in peace.
I hold great hopes that Barack Obama will, as promised, work to fix America’s crumbling infrastructure. Government must take the initiative to do that. A few weeks ago I sailed through gleaming, efficient airports in Hyderabad and Bangalore, India, airports that are helping to spur dramatic economic development in their regions, airports that make Los Angeles International or Chicago’s O’Hare look like a 1960s Greyhound bus stations tied together with duct tape. Last year I drove on new, smoothly-paved roads in the Tibetan region of China (where my cell phone worked better than at home, even checking email). Compare that to the several times a week I negotiate the bottlenecks and lane changes on the decaying approach to the Golden Gate Bridge, which has a safety rating way below the one that collapsed in Minnesota. The US has a WWII vintage air traffic control system that could probably be replaced by off-the-shelf stuff from Radio Shack: GPS, for one thing, the same technology that we have in our cars, phones and even some pocket digital cameras.
I am optimistic that the leadership of Barack Obama will change the nature of political discourse. His higher-ground emphasis on important issues, even while baited by personal attack, has made Mc Cain’s genuflections to his pal Joe the Plumber embarrassments to all but the most loyal partisans. Eight years from now, I am hopeful that the whole ecosystem of partisan politics, the notion of party loyalty as something akin to religion will change to something that will not insult the intelligence of the American people. Speaking to the staff at Google last year, Obama endorsed an “open source†approach to government. Open source in the technology industry means freely sharing ideas and inventions to advance the greater good, to make a better product. If you use the Firefox browser on your computer (you should because it is safer, faster and more versatile than Microsoft’s I.E.) it is open source and free, continuously improved by volunteers. Obama believes that a government can work the same way by putting records, legislation and rules in progress and congressional voting records online and allowing citizens and interest groups alike to make comments and suggestions, an acknowledgment of the fact that government doesn’t have all the answers, that government should be open and that citizens have good ideas too. Oh dear, isn’t that very Republican?
So, I am an optimist, hopefully not a naive one this time. The dot com revolution forever changed our way of thinking and doing business. It came from the bottom up, entrepreneurs cooking up new ideas and inventions in their garages, rather than top down from rich corporations, like our dying auto industry, using political influence to get subsidies and shut out competition. Old business models such as that of commissioned travel agencies simply didn’t work anymore. But tiny bed and breakfasts on far off islands could now sell their pleasures to a worldwide market. And I, who once toiled in a TV station with 300 other people, can now broadcast anything I damn please from my laptop.
I forsee a revolution that could equal that of that of the 90s. The world wide web ushered in an era of free, easy access to information. Now, with Wikis and other collaborative tools, we have the power to not only retrieve information, but to contribute to the dialogue, to collaborate with people from Capitol Hill to Kathmandu not only to do business, but to defuse conflicts, lessen poverty, exploitation and global warming and give voice to ordinary citizens in the decisions of government. Realistically, we still live in a very dangerous world and that is a tall order that few governments with their vested interests will embrace. But Barack Obama is a tall man who can help make America a tall country again, an inspiration and catalyst for real change.
As for the Republican Party, its higher-minded leaders are already calling for change. We hope they will go into the woods, do a little sweat lodge thing, a little drumming perhaps, and a lot of soul searching and remake their party from that of the frightened, angry mob to the representative of responsible conservatism. We need a two party system, but later please, after the repairs. For now maybe you just need Joe the Plumber to snake your pipes.
