The Ohio elections are in the past. Some are pleased, others less so, but most of us are reverting to that nagging, just-below-the-surface feeling that something remains amiss with our country.
On the PBS Newshour Friday night before the elections, columnist Mark Shields cited a poll showing that Americans, by a five-to-one margin, think the country is on the wrong track.
He noted that this pessimistic “psychological condition of the country” has been around since January 2004 – 94 consecutive months.
A recent Pew survey queried a sample of the white working class and discovered that 43 percent of this group didn’t think they’d be better off in 10 years, the most negative response of any group Pew had polled.
Pessimism and gloom are spreading throughout the land.
We need another Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
We need someone who can successfully offer us what FDR offered the people of his day: hope.
Let’s agree on this working definition of hope: a reasonable expectation that things will be better tomorrow than they are today.
Nationwide, the official unemployment rate stands at 9 percent.
By contrast, on March 10, 1933, the President’s Economic Council reported that in Lowell, Mass. – once the center of the American textile industry – the unemployment rate was 90 percent; in Akron, 60 percent; in Cleveland, 50 percent; in Toledo, 80 percent.
More than 60 percent of Americans were categorized as poor by the federal government.
This puts our present situation into perspective, but does little to ease the pain and tension of present day workers and students (who are tomorrow’s workers).
We need someone who will help us write a National Gratitude Journal, a listing of the things right with this country.
We need someone, with a smile on his or her face, who will not sugar-coat the facts, but who will work for the good of the American people, though it may cost him or her the next election.
We need someone who has faced his or her own personal crises and has emerged battered and scarred, but unbroken.
We need someone who will freely admit his or her personal mistakes and misadventures of the past, and will then move ahead.
We need a Harry Truman, who could duke it out with the “big boys,” who defended his family and his nation fiercely, who could play Chopin on the piano and who liked bourbon.
We need someone who has spent time in the private sector under the discipline of competition and markets, where wealth is truly created.
Where do we find such people? The current crop of candidates inspires little confidence. But in some cases, such as Truman’s, an ordinary individual can be capable of extraordinary things.
The American people, in their common-sense wisdom, instinctively know a few things.
No institution, bank or company should ever be so big that its failure would cause a catastrophe to those unaffiliated with it.
No institution, corporation or labor union should ever infringe upon the freedom of choice, a quality that makes us both cantankerous and American.
Government at all levels does not create jobs or employment. At best, it is something to be tolerated and managed for the common good.
Government does not know what’s best for us. It can – and should – keep us safe from external harm, but is incapable of preventing self-inflicted wounds caused by ignorance, carelessness or plain stupidity.
Debt is something to be tolerated and used in moderation; like fire, a good friend but a bad enemy.
The history of the Great Depression and the New Deal is replete with doom and crisis, mixed with government action, both effective and not.
It’s perhaps the only economic epoch whose ending can be precisely fixed: 7.55 a.m., Hawaii Time, Dec. 7, 1941. World War II effectively ended the Great Depression.
Let’s hope such a catastrophe does not end our Great Recession. Hope for the future should always be positive.
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