“GUESS WHAT? IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT!!!”

1/25/09

I don’t watch inaugurations and I don’t generally listen to or pay much attention to Inauguration speeches, and this one, despite its historic overtones, was no different. I have very little tolerance for banality and pabulum and even less patience for the standard campaign speech MO of telling people how absolutely wonderful and blameless they are while laying all their problems at the feet of (other) politicians. As loyal readers know, I have no argument with the castigation of scrofulous politicos, but I find absolving the generally soft and silly American people of all blame for their problems, most relevantly (in the context of a political speech) when it is they who put the scoundrels in power, is either idiotic, supremely and groundlessly adulatory, or both.

Being a prodigious consumer of news, however, I could not avoid reading or hearing about the speech or catching snippets thereof, and I can report that President Obama did not break with the past and did not disappoint in his fulsome provision of pap and pabulum. Especially notable was his decrying the notion “that America’s decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.” This particular exemplar of obsequiousness is wrong on its face: There is no doubt “that America’s decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.” To say otherwise is to simply tell people what they want to hear.

Why is it so obvious that “America’s decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights”? On a personal level, this is true simply because our generation has spent its way into a very large financial hole. We have lived way beyond our means, and our children must not only live within their means but also figuratively, and in some cases literally, pay the bills we left them. The only children who will escape this fate are children of those few parents in my generation who have not lived beyond their means, who live modestly, simply, and frugally and have come to know the joy of doing so. Such children have not been imbued with the sordid values of our generation and have not grown used to excessive pampering and luxurious living. Such children will not have to lower their sights. Further, such children will have learned a far more important lesson: that “lowering one’s sights” financially is, emotionally, intellectually, and, most importantly, spiritually, actually raising one’s sights, but I digress.

On a national level, it is certain that we must lower our sights and that our decline is inevitable simply because we have borrowed so much money from overseas “investors.” (Ever notice how in, say, The Wall Street Journal, foreign central banks become foreign investors when they are financing American profligacy and moral decline? But, again, I digress.) This money must be repaid. Even if it can be perpetually rolled over (and the tooth fairy exists), substantial interest will have to be paid on it. As I tell my students, when you owe someone money, the person to whom you owe money is entitled to a share of the fruits of your labor, that person effectively owns a piece of you. The Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Saudis, etc. thus own a very large piece of us. We are not entitled to nearly as big a share of our labors as we were in the past. We owe it to those who have financed our silliness and lack of self-discipline.

The true believers in the wonders of what they mistakenly think is a “free market” will scoff at my pessimism and will find themselves in the strange position of being in agreement with President Obama in his starry-eyed optimism, though not in his economic approach. Why, they will counter, we can grow our way out of this with enough tax cuts.
All we need to do is unleash the industriousness and ingenuity of the American people, and all will be fine.

How exactly are we going to “grow” our way out of this mess? Our manufacturing base, though not completely hollowed out as some observers argue, is a much smaller share of our national output than it was in decades past. This is no concern, the true believers tell us. Why, most manufacturing can be done more cheaply and efficiently abroad, leaving Americans to apply their considerable intellect and drive to more “value added” endeavors like high tech and financial services.

High tech? Check the enrollments at American engineering schools. How many native born Americans attend such schools? Smart American kids don’t want to be engineers. They want to be lawyers, entertainers, or big time Wall Street guys with $35 thousand commodes. (See my 1/22/09 post “BABY YOU CAN DRIVE MY CAR…”)
The engineers are, by and large, either kids from other countries or kids whose parents were born in other countries. The latter is terrific, the very epitome of the American dream. The former is problematical unless we can persuade, or get our government to allow, these kids to stay here once they get their degrees. As America’s economic dominance ebbs, this will become more difficult and thus our economic decline will feed on itself.

Financial services? Over the last twenty years or so, “financial services” in this country has consisted of figuring out how to get other countries to pay our bills, and that was when it was working. The last few years have shown what a great job we have done with the financial services industry. And, remember, when the big time financial services poohbahs were asking for a bailout, they were telling us that these bright Ivy Leaguers were unable to tell a bad credit from a good credit without generous dollops of taxpayer assistance. This is the business that is supposed to be the genesis of a new American generation founded on optimism and hope.

I sincerely hope that President Obama does a great job (See my post on election night.), but I am not optimistic about his chances, both for policy reasons and because I am a realist. Mr. Obama is a politician, much like John McCain, George Bush, or Rod Blagojevich. As such, he is incapable of solving societal ills and is ever mindful of his own, and his parties’ and contributors’, interests. He is battling the inevitable, and generally doing so by figuratively pouring gasoline on a roaring fire. (See my 1/7/09 post, “But it’s good you’re making it snow, Anthony, it’s real good. And tomorrow—tomorrow’s gonna be a real good day!”)

To tell the American people that everything is going to be okay if we just maintain our optimism is typical political balderdash. It adds to the evidence that Mr. Obama is little more than a very smooth talking, intelligent, attractive, and disarmingly calm and collected version of the same carnival barker who has dominated American politics for decades.