Challenging the Imagination of Main Street

Challenging the Imagination of Main Street Leave a comment

The good news is that Washington is trying to deal with the current “credit freeze-up.” The bad news is the process is ugly — real ugly! Plus, the majority of Americans don’t understand the current credit crisis. “Newspaper front pages have shunned any discussion; 60 Minutes has not even spared the transformation sixty seconds, despite its vast implications. This upheaval is probably “the greatest story never told” about the two decades between, say, 1986 and 2006. And since mid-2007, national and world credit markets have been panicked and paralyzed by hitherto obscure instruments — the stand-outs are collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) — that not even their designers and packagers can explain.” (Kevin Phillips, March 31, 2008)

The challenges are great, which calls for more than obligatory responses to issues. Where are the leaders who can instill confidence and not fear? The scenes we have been watching in Washington are not what we expect to see from our leadership — maybe third-world nations, but not here. But then, maybe we are no longer the nation we grew up knowing.

What is needed is a communicator such as Roosevelt (FDR) and the “fire-side chat” approach. What we get how are statement such as “I’m the decider.” What is needed are leaders that reflect love, wisdom and compassion toward one another. Sometimes Americans may appear to be stupid only because the truth has not been effectively communicated. The landscape of American public rhetoric is cluttered with “sound-bites” and political posturing fitting of our fast food nation mentality, but not to solving the major problems we are facing and inspiring confidence in the American people — main street, if you will. Without an understanding of the credit crisis, people take the path of lease resistance and jump on the false dichotomy of “main street vs. a Wall Street bailout.” The truth is, one doesn’t function effectively with out the other.

Remember the term “compassionate conservatism?” Where’s the compassion when the best you can say to Americans is “Over the past few weeks, many Americans have felt anxiety about their finances and their future. I understand their worry and their frustration.” (Bush on the 24th) Why not communicate using words of compassion that can settle the emotions of fear and despair?

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.

— Aeschylus Agamemnon

kenne

(The copy in this posting was originally written in a series of emails with my good friend, Bob McNeily.)