The Message is the Medium

Here is a shocking statistic: Sweden, with a population of 12 million, has created 400,000 jobs in the alternate energy sector. This is a hopeful omen for U.S. industry, with our abundance of wind and solar power. Solar panels alone, a proven technology, on government installations and private property throughout our southern and western regions, not to mention an export market of sun-drenched countries stretching from Mexico to Brazil, could probably account for millions of immediately profitable opportunities.

It doesn’t hurt that Vice-President Joe Biden takes the train each night from Washington DC to his home in Wilmington DE, and is a confirmed supporter of Amtrak. This writer has long bemoaned the official U.S. policy of benign neglect for passenger rail service, leaving Americans to travel long distance at a snail’s pace under lamentable conditions, even as European countries and Japan develop ever more efficient networks of train service and export them to emerging countries like China. They have put into service bullet trains and magnetic levitation trains that literally fly over the tracks, while Americans are forced to endure cattle car conditions in dilapidated monstrosities. All that is coming to an end now as Congress passes, and President Obama signs, over Republican howls of anguish, funding bills enabling an exponential upgrade of passenger rail service.

Mostly everything in the U.S. is obsolete, owing to an economic model that is wedded to a 19th century notion of a marketplace that solves problems out of enlightened self-interest. Put succinctly, my self-interest may be detrimental to yours. Just because this approach may have worked in 1889 does not mean that it is appropriate for 2009, but that is the line that is still being vaunted by those sectors whose philosophy is to stint on innovation while paying huge shareholder dividends.

Our present social system is as obsolete as our rolling stock. Americans are force fed a philosophy of rugged economic individualism, which promotes infighting at every level of activity, while more cooperative forms of commercial culture like Japanese notions of teamwork are derided as mass conformism and European systems of social welfare are condemned as diabolical plots to sap initiative.

Where is the impetus for these attacks coming from? The same coalition of big business interests and social conservatives that got us into this mess.

I don’t believe the American electorate has swung to the left. I believe they are giving the Democrats a chance to show what they can do in dismay over the present economic model, which has proved a disaster. In this the Democrats are being helped by the dismal performance of the Republicans in opposition. Eventually, though, the Republicans will develop an effective line of attack, and by then Obama had better be prepared to demonstrate that his strategy is working, or the country will be subject to yet another round of antediluvian obstructionism.

The British seem to be creeping away from the Anglo-Saxon model of economic triumphalism, as well they might, considering the legacy of Thatcherism that has left their economy in a shambles of debris. British business secretary Lord Mandelson, in a meeting with French industrialists, advocated a central coordinating strategy for Britain of setting long-term goals and objectives in energy and transport and creating the infrastructure for high-speed trains and aerospace, and establishing incentives for British industry of conform to those objectives.

By expressing those goals, the British seem to be giving voice to the unstated ambitions of the Obama administration, which is moving in that direction.

A recent study showed that, contrary to the popular image of the Scandinavian countries as a region of suicidal drunkards, they are the happiest people in the world. Evidently, all the social engineering to which they have been subjected for several generations has left them with a relatively carefree attitude with regard to their prospects. And far from having their initiative leeched from them, they seem to have adapted quite nicely to modern economic circumstances, with innovation and new industries such as green technologies and telecommunications.

The challenge to President Obama would now seem to be to communicate his strategic vision to Americans and the world at large, and to reassure holders of American debt that their investment is secure. He is an adequate speaker, but his seems to be the only voice capable of advancing a coherent message. Obviously, not too many Americans possess the oratorical elegance of a Lord Mandelson. Nevertheless, the administration needs to speak with more than one voice. Might Obama not enlist the one speaker whose elocutionary talents surpass even his – Bill Clinton?

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Posted on 3/15/2009 ( Permanent Link )
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