The Fundamental Nature of the Change We Need

One of the reasons the talking heads on TV are having difficulty coping with our new President’s approach to Change is that they tend to break everything into bite-sized (perhaps even “sound-bite-sized”) chunks for easy swallowing. A Fast Food approach to thinking. But Obama doesn’t think that way. He isn’t only thinking of the bites, or even a whole burger or a Big Meal Deal or a Family Pack. He’s thinking in terms of balanced nutrition for a healthy lifetime.

What does this mean? This means that saying, “He can’t spend so much money on Stimulus without putting off Health Care Reform” makes absolutely no sense. Health Care Reform is a necessary part of reducing the cost of living for the average person so that any Stimulus package has greater impact. Improving working conditions and pay for teachers means Education will be a more expensive proposition. But having a better-educated workforce a few years from now will result in such improvements in efficiency and productivity that we will more than make up the costs.

In other words, Obama is taking a holistic approach, not a piecemeal approach. He understands that “fixing” one thing does no good unless everything else is adjusted to take advantage of the change. What we’re looking for here is an approach to organizing the activities of the US government in a way that will have the highest return of benefits for “costs” (whether those costs are measured in terms of dollars or effort or political capital, or whatever) over the long term.

How are these benefits to be measured? That is another matter for debate. A system that will allow every American to own a Winnebago now but will result in the destruction of the world due to global warming in another century could be considered as offering some benefit, but in my opinion the long term costs are too high. The economic system that has dominated this country since the Second World War has been one that has focused on making short-term profits at the expense of long-term benefits. It will take a long time, and a lot of powerful resistance will have to be overcome, to re-educate the public about ways of measuring success and happiness that will not lead to disaster in the long term.

The basic nature of this Change has been evident in Obama’s thinking from the nation’s first real introduction to him. When he spoke at the Democratic convention in 2004 and said that we are not Red States and Blue States, but the United States, he was talking about the need to join together to solve our problems. The party-line bickering that has characterized government for several years has led to decisions being made not on the basis of what will work or what is good for the country, but on the basis of who can defeat who and rub their noses in it.

It’s still going on, but I’m betting Obama can get beyond it simply by not stooping to that level. When he says he’s going to listen to everyone, he means it. But he’s not like the man who took his son and his donkey to market and reacted to every passerby’s snide comments by changing who rode or led or carried whom or what.

Instead, he has a plan. This plan is not written in stone. It’s not a matter of “My way or the highway.” The Obama plan — and each part of that plan (it is the parts that Congress and the Senate will address, one at a time) — has at its essence a practical approach to improving the way things work in America. The details are not critical, and can be adjusted to accommodate the needs and desires of the public and its representatives, whichever side of the aisle they stand on.

As an example, look at the developing Stimulus package. As originally conceived, this package did not include the kind of tax cuts that it now features, because from one viewpoint, those tax cuts were not seen as necessary. But the Republicans begged to differ. So now there are more tax cuts included, though many Democrats object. The key purpose of the Stimulus package remains unchanged, but there are some elements in it for each constituency. Does that make it ideal? Not at all, from either perspective. But can it be accepted? Perhaps there will be a need for further massaging, but eventually both sides should be able to accept the compromise that results. And achieving effective compromise can only happen if sincere input is obtained from all sides, whether or not one particular group could push through a “purer” version through sheer weight of numbers.

This is an essential element in Obama’s notion of Change. Our intentions as a People and as a Country should be to work with others to achieve common solutions. For too long we have operated in the interests of powerful forces — notably economic interests — that have been focused on immediate gains for a limited group rather than on long-term goals that will benefit humanity as a whole and all Americans as a consequence. These limited interests have led us to odd and ultimately disastrous choices in our approaches to foreign policy, and these choices have in turn led to the destructive acts of war rather than to constructive efforts that could have saved thousands of lives, reduced international tensions, and provided millions with higher standards of living than they now have.

We are the People. We have a great System set out for us in the form of the US government. But for many years we allowed a privileged few to control that System and use it for their own ends. The low esteem in which the public now holds the government is evidence of the success of that approach. President Obama’s Change aims to reclaim the government for the People. Because “the government” and “the People” really should be synonymous terms. The Obama Administration is now welcoming us in. We have to enter, and we have to stay inside and active. As soon as we put up our “Mission Accomplished” banner and fall asleep under it, someone else will start making our decisions for us, and we will once again find ourselves on the outside looking in.

This is why I’m writing “Change” with a capital C. The Change we need is not simply an accumulation of little policy changes, little tweaks to the system. It is a completely new vision of where this country is going and how the whole System has to work as an integrated unit in order to get us there. Obama understands this. The real Change we’re looking for will happen much more smoothly as the rest of us begin to understand it — and act accordingly — as well.

There are many aspects to the Change that is upon us. My next entries in this blog will detail my views on several of them. I’ll be interested in your responses.