Somehow, we seem to have lost the capacity for long-range planning and execution — at a time when, arguably, foresight and patience are more essential than ever before.
That is the heart of the argument Eugene Robinson presents in
this op ed in today's
Washington Post.
He gives many examples of it, starting with the most recent report on climate change Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As he notes in the paragraph just before that with which I began:
The impact of climate change, while undeniably real, is somewhere between subtle and imperceptible when viewed in an election-to-election time frame. Likewise, measures to decrease carbon emissions would have no immediate payoff. The question is what atmospheric temperatures will be like at the end of the century, not at the end of Senator So-and-So’s next term.
But it is so much more than climate change.
I think his analysis is as good as far as it goes, but ignores to some degree how much the attitude of short-range thinking distorts so much more than merely our electoral process.
Please keep reading.
Robinson at times uses very colorful language, such as on climate change talking about "the parboiling of the planet." He covers many issues - the hollowing out of the middle class, the increasingly widespread disdain for politics and both main political parties, the decaying status of our infrastructure. He writes
I believe voters understand at some level that the problems facing the U.S. economy are structural and will take time to solve. But it is hard to imagine how our system can possibly implement policies that would be effective in the long run — or how, if we managed to take the right course, we could possibly stick to it.
But then, we are conditioned as a society to think in the short term.
Consider - a team hires a new coach in professional sport. If he does not win in a couple of years he is gone.
Or consider if you will the issue of undocumented aliens who came here as children. This is an issue that has festered for years. The Republicans (and some Democrats) have blocked Congressional action for short-term political purposes. For some reason the White House chose not to take executive action to address part of the problem, ostensibly for the short term purpose of not endangering some Democratic candidates/office-holders, even though in the short term it could well cost them control of the US Senate (think of Hispanic voters just in Colorado and Georgia), and it means postponing even further addressing a problem whose continuation represents an abandonment of the historic American tendency to move to greater equity, politically and socially.
Robinson may be somewhat off target in his discussion of education, although there is no doubt that we need major educational change, albeit not in the direction of the consensus on "reform" that has excluded the voices of professional educators, parents and students. I will not address that further.
Infrastructure and debt are two key issues he does address. On the former he writes
Anyone who travels to other industrialized countries comes back with the realization that U.S. infrastructure is falling behind. Many countries have much faster and more widely available Internet service, which has to be a national priority in the information age. Other countries have newer airports, deeper ports, faster trains, sounder bridges. Yet the bipartisan consensus on infrastructure spending has disintegrated, and I believe this is because such projects take time — and vision.
Yet we have too many, including those who served in Democratic administrations, whose answer is not that these be addressed as a matter of a commitment to the public sector but only be done insofar as the results are privately owned and operated. We have seen the Indiana Toll Road sold, we are seeing water systems sold. Basic infrastructure should also include buildings for public schools, and as I have written for years, many are falling apart and decaying, yet rather than address that we choose to further privatize the public function of EQUITABLY providing a MEANINGFUL education for ALL of our children. In the anti-immigrant hysteria fueled by some politicians, they would not only deny healthcare to children here because parents brought them here without the niceties of proper immigration status, they want to deny them access to free public schooling. In other words, in the short term, we "save" money by not spending on their education and their healthcare, while in the long term we jeopardize national health, we have an increasing number unprepared to contribute to the economy, which probably won't matter because we will deny them meaningful employment as well. Oh, and while we are at it, some even want to punish further, by denying those born here of parents not here legally their constitutional right to birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. That should not surprise, since many of such haters ignore that rights under the first Ten Amendments are given to persons, not just citizens.
On debt, one can argue that we obsess over the amount rather than for what purposes it is incurred. I will grant that we have incurred a lot of debt (Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz has argued it will eventually have cost more than $3 trillion) we should not have - here I think of the trillions especially on Iraq, an illegal aggression that had no basis in ingternational law and which represented a massive shifting of public resources to private pockets of the military-industrial-intelligence complex with little benefit to our security or international stability.
Robinson writes about the debt
I haven’t mentioned the national debt, and that’s because interest rates are at historic lows. This seems to me a perfect time to make long-term investments that will not produce returns in one year, or even five years, but that promise to create the necessary conditions for sustained economic growth.
These words are reminiscent of those of another Nobel Laureate, Paul Krugman, who argued in Obama's first term for greater borrowing to stimulate the economy. We could also be refinancing extant higher interest debt to lower the costs to the taxpayer of debt already incurred for whatever reason.
Robinson touches on other issues without fully exploring them. Thus there is no doubt that our corporate tax structure needs to be revisited. But we cannot do so in an environment that allows corporations to distort the political process with their campaign contributions or else the long-term effect will be a further diminution of the ability of ordinary citizens to exercise their role as supposed sovereigns under the notion of "We the people of the United States." Major changes to the funding and operation of our political campaigns are a necessary precondition to making the kind of changes required for America to have any hope of continuing as a meaningful liberal democracy and a society that does not continue to ever-increasing economic inequity.
Let us consider the following.
1. How many politicians are willing to risk the next election in order to advance necessary long-term thinking? How do we the voters respond when politicians speak bluntly about what we need?
2. Corporate governance and tax policy encourage short-term thinking even when it is to the detriment of the financial health of the corporate entity and thus to the wealth of those owning the corporation, either directly in personally owned shares or through their pension funds (for those who still have pensions) or their IRAs.
3. Our increasing emphasis on test scores both for students and as a means of evaluating teachers and schools creates a distortion where the short-term increase on the scores totally obliviates any real focus on long-term learning, including learning how to learn. Instead we are teaching how to succeed on tests. And, sorry folks, but the new tests tied to the Common Core State Standards do not make things any better, and in many ways exacerbate the problem.
4. Our journalism has totally failed our society, as increasingly we have outlets that do not report but advocate and in some cases distort. What is covered is the latest "gotcha" or gaffe, not the substance. Broadcast media is less inclined to explore the root causes of disorder and anger and dismay, starting with poverty and including racism and sexism and nativism and religious bigotry. Short-term desire for increased eyeballs or greater circulation means we have a Gresham's Law of information, where that which is debased drives out that which should be of greater value
Robinson ends his column with this paragraph:
Sadly, there are few votes to be won with measures that are painful or spending that may not bring results in our lifetimes. No glory, just honor.
That may be true, but it is only part of the problem. It is within our power to change all this. In my own field of education we have seen cases where the moneyed interests backing candidates who support the distorted "reforms" with huge sums have been defeated by grass-roots organizing of ordinary people - we saw that in the school board races in Bridgeport CT and Los Angeles, in the election for state superintendent in Indiana and elsewhere. We saw in the election of a Socialist to Seattle City Council, in the election of progressives to city-wide offices and city council in New York City.
Too often when engaging in these conflicts, many on the progressive side get discouraged by early losses. That is short-term thinking of the worst kind. We need to recognize that it takes a while for messages to sink in. Think merely of the issue of marriage equality, and how quickly the national mood has switched on that, in large part because it came to be seen as a matter of fundamental equity.
Many rich and wealthy do not want the ordinary folks to vote. They are afraid of the power of the massed votes of those who are not like them. They are right to be afraid. So they will try to divide those up by race, by religion, by fear. And they will attempt to dissuade and block from political participation those who would vote in a way that would decrease their power and control.
This country needs a commitment to long-term thinking.
Robinson is right on that.
In my opinion his column does not go far enough.
And regardless of the outcome of today's electoral contests and any subsequent run-off elections (LA and GA Senate?), those of us committed to a more equitable and democratic society need to maintain our own long-term focus.
Peace.