Our national psyche now seems to begin and end with the downside: Criminal trials for prominent legislators and a former president; beastly heat or rain or both nearly everywhere; famine and war on three continents; the tragedy of Israel and Palestine. Elections in Europe, political conventions in America. An old and enfeebled Biden, a lawless and insolent Trump.
There’s the drift. If America is depressed, its leadership is leading the way.
Consider our collapse of foreign policy, an item that stands out in an assessment of our mood. Over two decades our approach has been whipsaw in pressing matters of climate change, Russian aggression, Chinese cunning, the Middle East hell-trap and more.
To hear it from the world’s leaders, America gives the world the jitters; from Bush through Biden, we have seemed vague, tentative or clumsy. Canada’s Trudeau, France’s Macron, Germany’s Scholz, even China’s Xi, are among the perplexed.
Each time a president or a top legislator is asked whether the administration or the Congress is confused, the answer is no. Then we are treated to their special brand of consistency in energy, the environment, foreign affairs, even inflation.
This is not convincing. Even the press is confused as it bends over to be “objective,” attempts at balance that often falsify the moment. There is no other side to the invasion of Ukraine, or polluted air and water, massacre by famine in Africa, or decades of tragic misstep in the Middle East.
The Democrats have lost control of their own. Republicans have surrendered control to one man. In the process, we have gone thrashing about the Middle East, poked around Europe’s Balkans, feuded with China, replaced bridges with walls along our own borders. All the while a basic fact is ignored or forgotten, that the first purpose of a foreign policy is the preservation of our values and society at home.
If just one leader in the Congress or executive branch would face an audience and say, “we blew it,” we would be one our way. Instead we are scolded for insisting that they end the excuses and charades.
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Richard Nixon once identified the American people as children, to be treated that way. Recent presidents and congressional leaders are close to that mark, not because we are really childlike, but because their service became so frenetic that they were like parents who are everywhere around us, telling us what to do and what to believe and shouting at us or spanking our hands when we don’t do it or believe it.
Our “leaders,” if we can call them that today, talk and talk, and it is impossible to realize that it is us and our lives they are talking about. Their language is scripted and abstract, designed to appeal to a certain cult or tribe or focus group. There are no ideas today, only motives and strategies.
Barbara Tuchman, the late historian, once described the leadership of the Nixon and Ford years as “The Great Pretenders.” Today when we demand that their heirs quit pretending, they turn on us and chide us for daring to question their lies.
The sum of it is that politics has become the ugliest game in America. It has compounded a sense of frustration. It is no longer possible to believe an individual – even a president – can beat the game. The game has become too unwieldy to play with much hope of winning.
That game may come down a peg with the next election, but don’t bet on it.
“There are no ideas today, only motives and strategies…”
That is the theme and beginning of a book. In 2007, Lee Iococca wrote “Where have all the leaders gone?” In the first page of the book, he asks, “Where the hell is the outrage?” Your comment quoted above begins to address that question. It is discouraging how many of your past important voices thought they were sounding warnings, but they turned out to be predictions.