A Rare Win for America: Leadership

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For once, the circular firing squad that is the Democratic Party unwound itself. For once, it took aim at our real enemies: inertia, inaction, stagnation and decline. For once, in the not-quite two years since the pandemic began, our paralyzed government accomplished something besides emergency spending to keep desperate people off the streets.

Ten years ago, I published a post on our ten gravest national problems, noting how long each had festered. Even at that time, their average longevity was 17.5 years. Today it’s over a quarter of a century.

How many of the ten have we even begun tackling seriously? Until yesterday, only one. With our disastrous exit from Afghanistan, we have mostly wound down our endless wars, although we keep contemplating yet another over Taiwan.

For a time, fracking seemed to have solved our dependence on foreign oil. But recently OPEC and the Russians have learned how to exploit our individualistic “wildcat” oil culture. By calibrating their collective oil production, they keep prices just low enough to discourage the incessant drilling that fracking requires, but high enough to drain away the substance of our nation’s wealth. And that’s precisely what they are doing now.

Eleven years ago, I published a post entitled “Four Dollars a Gallon by Next Summer.” It explained how petrostates were rapidly learning economics and thus discovering how to squeeze us cleverly for cash. My timing was off. The rise of fracking delayed the inevitable for almost another decade. But gasoline prices in California are now closing on five dollars a gallon with no end in sight.

So I wouldn’t say that we’ve kicked our foreign-oil habit quite yet. Even if we ourselves produce much of the oil we need, the global market dominated by OPEC and Russia sets the price of gas at our pumps. Our transition to electric vehicles is only now beginning in earnest.

Thus today we’ve seriously addressed only two of our ten big national problems that have festered, on average, for over a quarter century. We’ve cut our losses in our last current endless war. And last night’s House passage of the so-called “hard” infrastructure bill marked the bare beginnings of a fix to our woefully dilapidated physical infrastructure. The biggest problem, which underlies them all, is still broken government.

Two out of ten. Twenty percent. That’s a failing grade in any course that I know of. And a failing grade means that “USA!” as “Number One!” is rapidly fading into history, propelled by our dismal scores in math and even reading on international tests.

But let’s be optimistic. Until last night, our grade in solving major problems was only 10%. Doubling our score is something, albeit from a dismal base.

What’s the secret sauce that made this happen? A little thing called “leadership,” which is woefully rare today.

Last night brought a strange but welcome sight. Our three Democratic House leaders stood in a “Vee” formation. Jim Clyburn (House Majority Whip) was on the left, with Steny Hoyer (House Majority Leader) on the right. Slightly built Speaker Nancy Pelosi, dwarfed by the men, stood in the center. Together they represent states with 15.31% of our national population and 17.94% of national GDP. Together, they look a lot like America.

What a nice contrast from the dismal trio of GOP Senate leaders: Barrasso, Thune and McConnell! So often arrayed together like a Mafia don backed by his enforcers, all are white men. Collectively, they represent states with 1.79% of our national population and 1.43% of our national GDP.

For years, if not decades, these leaders of so little have effectively controlled our nation’s Congress and therefore our government. If they couldn’t control it for good, they made it impotent. Besides the gross malapportionment of our Senate and its archaic filibuster, their secret was personal leadership.

They ordered, and the GOP rank and file mostly obeyed. Their followers stuck with them through the most corrupt and incompetent presidency in over a century, if not ever. They stuck together through two impeachments, both of which failed conviction. They stuck together through multiple attempts to repeal Obamacare and replace it with nothing. (The last such attempt failed by a single vote in the Senate, cast by their own renegade, the late John McCain.)

They stuck together through massive public rejection of masks, social distancing, and vaccines. In fact, they encouraged much of the recalcitrance, while hypocritically vaccinating themselves in private. And now they are sticking together in insisting that what happened on January 6 was not an insurrection by their own followers. Some even support the bald lie that it was a “false flag” operation by progressives.

So we, the people, are confused and deluded. In the worst pandemic in a century, many of us don’t wear our masks, don’t get vaccinated, don’t take precautions, and so suffer and die. Many of us think that our personal “freedom” to do as we wish and to raise our kids as we wish outweighs doing something—anything!—to advance the nation’s real interests and solve those ten long-festering problems.

So a rich guy named Youngkin, having no experience in elective office but a glib and optimistic line, won the governorship of Virginia in a stunning upset. He won, many think, with a lie that critical race theory—something developed and taught in law schools—is being shoved down the throats of kids in high school and even grammar school. Like the Big Lie of a stolen election, this lie now animates the GOP “base” and propels our nation faster down the drain of decline.

The solution is obvious but lately unaccustomed: leadership. We need leadership that respects the truth and science and exerts its power in aid of both. We need realists for leaders, not ideologues and demagogues.

Speaker Pelosi made a good start in getting the “hard” infrastructure bill over the finish line. So did President Biden (belatedly) in forcing big companies to get their employees vaccinated or tested weekly, and federally-supported health-care facilities to get their employees vaccinated period.

The right will scream and holler “tyranny!” To so-called “conservatives,” leading is OK only when they do it, even if they lead with lies toward nothing.

But our nation has been leaderless for far too long. Lately “leadership” has meant promoting fantasy, made up out of whole cloth, about things like massive voter fraud, the alleged “dangers” of the safest and most effective vaccines in medical history (and the fastest developed), and the “indoctrination” of young school children in a theory taught only electively in law schools.

None of our Democratic leaders is a great orator. Not President Biden. Not Speaker Pelosi. Not Jim Clyburn or Steny Hoyer. Certainly not Chuck Schumer. But collectively they have over a century of political experience. They know what needs to be done and how to do it.

Speaker Pelosi just showed she knows how to count votes. Now she has to start twisting arms like Lyndon Johnson, but politely. (“Pecker in my pocket” is not a good metaphor for a lady to use.) So does Majority Leader Schumer.

Now all our Democratic leaders have to lead, as President Biden and Speaker Pelosi are ever-so-tentatively starting to do. And we, the people, have to follow. We have just spent over a quarter century, on average, dead in the water, with little progress in solving the ten big problems that threaten our national survival, let alone our pre-eminence. That’s far too long.

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