Since You Were There At The Creation ...

Please forgive the somewhat blatant self-promotion, but for a social policy blog I periodically contribute to, I recently wrote a short piece on fiscal policy that has gotten a lot of positive feedback.

As it was inspired in part by the Wiehe Election Night bacchanal and as most of you were there, I thought I would share it with the group. Look at the wonkery you inspire ...

Originally posted at Inclusionist.org

Last Tuesday was an emotional night in Durham, N.C. At first, the Bull City was unusually still as people gathered in homes and restaurants to watch the election returns. But as soon as the race was called for Barack Obama, the city erupted. People began screening, subdued viewing parties morphed into raucous celebrations and crowds spilled onto the streets to commemorate the event with friends, neighbors and strangers.

Even a typically reserved person like me couldn’t help but to be moved by the intensity of the reaction. Doubtlessly, this passion arose from an awareness of the night’s significance in America’s racial history – a significance even more pronounced in a Southern city with a sizable African-American community. Yet almost as striking was the event’s generational significance. For individuals who grew up during the 1980s and 1990s (the first presidential election I remember is 1984; the first one I voted in was 1996), Tuesday’s outcome seemingly marked a break from the narrow, divisive, YOYO politics that have characterized their lives. At that moment, it seemed like something had changed and that progress indeed is possible.

It’s a good thing then, that few of the people out on the streets were at nearby Duke University a few days later for a forum on America’s “entitlement” crisis. Led by the Brookings Institution’s Ron Haskins, who gave a talk entitled “Deficit and Disaster,” the symposium basically concluded that the U.S. is broke and can’t afford to do anything new or better unless it reduces the Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare programs, particularly in ways that ask younger people to pay more in exchange for less secure benefits.

Sitting in the conference room, it finally dawned on me what bothers me the most about the fiscal crisis debate. It isn’t simply the factual problems – though those abound, as writers like Dean Baker and Robert Kuttner consistently note, but rather, the bleak, almost hopeless view of America. After all, the argument basically says that there is no way in which the richest country in the history of the world can afford to provide even a modicum of retirement security and health care to its citizens. Moreover, what we are already doing is too much and must be reduced. Not exactly a message of “Yes We Can.”

If the generational passion that manifested itself on the streets of Durham last week is to be harnessed to better the American commonweal, the kinds of policy debates that took place last week at Duke must end. America indeed face serious challenges, and hard decisions will need to be made on a variety of issues. Yet if last Tuesday’s election teaches anything, it is that people, especially younger people, will respond to calls based on what they and their country can be, not what others tell them it can’t be.