Requiem for a decaying America
President-elect Obama made a powerful and compelling speech Thursday in announcing his American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.
But it seems to me the mainstream media have missed the real story here.
I’ve never heard such a blunt, even frightening description of the condition in which the United States now finds itself. The problems go way beyond the current economic crisis. You’d think, according to the media, that this is all there is to it.
The headlines and the ledes were much the same all over. The Washington Post web site headlined, Obama warns of dire consequences without stimulus. TheToronto Globe and Mail used the same words to head up its web report.
The New York Times had a small variation: Obama presses for action on the economy. CNN echoed the same thrust: Bold action essential on economy, Obama warns.
Sure, the President-elect focused on the steps he plans to propose to kickstart the economy – a trillion dollars in new spending and tax cuts, and the prospect of a trillion dollar a year deficit extending many years into the future. He’ll need to, and he’ll need the support of both Democrats and Republicans. He’s not likely to get it.
Llisten carefully to what Barack Obama had to say at George Mason University and you’ll see a recognition that America’s problems are far more fundamental — and will be much more difficult to resolve — than merely getting the stock market back up or creating a few million new jobs.
The line in his speech that caught me was the one about ”an era of profound irresponsibility that stretched from corporate boardrooms to the halls of power in Washington.”
And this:
“To give our children the chance to live out their dreams in a world that’s never been more competitive … we’ll provide new computers, new technology, and new training for teachers so that students in Chicago and Boston can compete with kids in Beijing for the high-tech, high wage jobs of the future.”
Did you ever hear such an admission that the United States has come through an era of unbridled corruption, and that it now faces a second-class future?
The President-elect, perhaps unwittingly, was delivering a requiem for a decaying America. Consider these facts:
- The United States is now the world’s No. 1 debtor nation and cannot pay its bills
- American industry is no longer competitive withAsian or even European rivals
- The U.S. has fallen so far behind in graduating engineers and scientists that it will likely never catch up with China or Europe
- The global reputation of the U.S. has been shattered by its ill-conceived reaction to a single, admittedly traumatic, terrorist attack
- George W. Bush leaves office as the most reviled — and morally most corrupt — president in American history.
The problems facing the new President far surpass the dire challenges that confronted Franklin Roosevelt when he took office at the depths of the Depression. Then, it was only jobs. Now, it’s survival.
Let’s all wish Barack Obama much wisdom, the support of his people, and good fortune when he swears in as the new President next week.
He’ll need all of that, and more, to check the decay that has brought America to its lowest ebb since the fateful, frightening days of its Civil War.
