And, yet...why was my one overwhelming impression that I was in some sort of wonderland last night? I recognize now that I had the same lingering uneasiness during the previous debate, that it was as if the candidates were sitting on a park bench making small talk about the weather while the city around them was in flames. Yes, they talked about the economic difficulties, and they threw prepared zingers at each other, and generally stuck to their respective debate strategies.
Therein was the problem. These are strangely difficult times, scary because we don't understand the severity of the problems and yet intuit impending doom. The DOW has dropped 33% in the last year, the country has steadily hemorrhaged jobs each month, many venerable Wall St institutions have simply disappeared, every bank out there is holding its breath (and its cash), all the major central banks in the world are frantically coordinating their daily responses, and every smart economist out there is generally freaking out. And yet, our would-be leaders talked last night about this and that as though this were a normal election year. While the city around them was burning to the ground, it seemed, they were arguing over who would be the better fire chief, muttering about extra fire extinguishers in each home.
As Peggy Noonan--a respected conservative columnist--said on several programs recently, it seemed to her that the McCain campaign was not big enough for the moment we're in. Indeed, I think she was saying that neither campaign was acting in a manner commensurate with the magnitude of this crisis. CNN's Gloria Berger said last night that what most ordinary people seem to want from their leaders right now is reassurance more than anything else. I agree. One of my fondest childhood memories crystallizes this want: sitting in the back of the car as my parents drove us home after a fun evening, me half-asleep and them speaking to each other in hushed voices so as to not wake up me and my sister. I bet you have a memory just like this one. I didn't know what they were discussing, but I knew they had it covered and I was secure in that fact.
Neither candidate gave that sense of reassurance yesterday. The country does not need more three point plans or more talk about spending seven hundred bizillion dollars to fix this or that. What we need is a modern day _____ (fill in the blank) leader who will rally us back into optimism and a "can do" spirit. If Obama is going to be President, as polling now shows likely, he had better channel his inner JFK or Reagan by Inauguration Day on January 20th, 2009, and rally the country around a new agenda. Without that public support, he will flounder and the country will be no better off than it is right now.
Here's a good start for what he might say:
I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.
(President Franklin D. Roosevelt, at his first inaugural on March 4, 1933)
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