I was there, on the ground, in 2009, when President Obama took the oath of office. I remember the palpable sense of deflation as he gave his first inaugural address. After a campaign where he clearly seemed to get it, he didn’t get it.
What the country needed right then was a narrative, a story. Here’s how we got here. These are the malefactors. Here is what we will do to win back our country.
Those were dark days. Frightening. The banking system was falling apart. Unemployment was spiking. The global economy was on a razor’s edge.
And there was a story to tell. There were malefactors. There was a path. But the path needed a story, a true and compelling story, to carry us through, to win the day.
But there was no story. We were told to tighten our belts, and that the government must tighten its belt. And that it would be hard and it would require a lot of us as citizens. We wouldn’t look back, we wouldn’t assign blame, we would move forward.
Now let’s remember, there was a lot of criminality and plenty of venality that led us to a crash and a disaster. But all of the pain was shared, and none of it was directed at those who had profited most from the bubble they manufactured.
I don’t remember exactly who said it or where I read it, but I need to footnote it. President Obama failed from the first day to build a strong and coherent narrative. Without that, his presidency has lacked coherence. Without that, he elided into “the shift” to deficit reduction that led to so much continued pain.
There were radical solutions available. The country could have bankrolled the states to offset the dramatic losses in tax revenue. That would have saved the jobs of millions of teachers, police officers, first responders.
The Fed could have offset its massive charity to the banking system by forgiving 50% of all mortgages, preventing a massive run of foreclosures.
These kinds of solutions were only possible in the context of a compelling story, where it’s clear who are the victims, and who are the perpetrators.
Spin forward 5 years or so. At the end of this ridiculous fight over the government shutdown and the debt limit, we need a story again. A compelling story. Here’s what my congressman, Paul Tonko, wrote on his Facebook page:
“Now is not the time to dwell on who won or lost, because everyone loses when partisanship dominates Congress. Now is the time to come together and address the real challenges that face our country. Our unemployment rate continues to hover at 7.3%, and both parties need to come together, focus on jobs, and negotiate an annual budget that will help the private sector put millions of Americans back to work.”
Oy. Now is absolutely the time to dwell on who won or lost. This crisis is coming right back in three months. And when it does, we had better have a story to tell. Otherwise, things will happen in a vacuum.
And this canard about partisanship must be slain. Partisanship is natural and necessary. You can't blame partisanship, because that elevates bipartisanship as an end unto itself. Instead, let's blame mindless extremism, let's blame worthless, cowardly leadership, let's blame toothless journalism, and let's blame a powerful, well-funded ultraconservative cabal that makes the leaders of this mess untouchable in elections.
If we don’t tell this story accurately, we can never win the day. If the President insists on moving forward without driving the national conversation, we will have learned nothing.