Back to the Future...

Today’s Quote:

Is it that God has at last removed his blessing from the U.S.A. and
what we feel now is just the clank of the old historical machinery,
the sudden jerking ahead of the rollercoaster cars as the chain catches
hold and carries us out and up toward the brink from that felicitous
and privileged siding where even unbelievers admitted that if it was
not God who blessed the U.S.A., then at least some great good luck
had befallen us, and that now the blessing or the luck is over, the
machinery clanks, the chain catches hold, and the cars jerk forward?

From Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins

Sometimes, before we resume battle, we require time to reflect on past as well as current events. As I thought about what to write this morning, I thought about a time thirty years ago that my brother and fellow blogger may scarcely remember. I thought, too, about the opportunity that bad times offers, and the consequences that flow from the ways in which we use that opportunity.

Two months ago we faced a gasoline shortage in my neck of the woods. A tsunami of bad events seemed to rain down upon us; it included the hurricane that disrupted refining and shipping of gas to parts of the country, followed quickly by the unbelievable failure of Wachovia, followed by the equally incredible fall of the market. The failures in the banking/mortgage sector and the market seemed surreal. We could not grasp the terrible news that kept coming and getting worse. Oddly, having to hoard and hunt for gas made all of the larger bad events seem more real. For me, the hoarding and the hunting recalled memories from decades ago: when I was in college, Jimmy Carter was elected. Gas prices, along with all other prices, skyrocketed, and I remember sitting in gas lines caused by Carter’s misguided effort to control them. I remember, too, graduating from a top university with top honors and discovering that unemployment awaited me. So, I won a scholarship to go back to school. When I finished, Ronald Reagan had just been elected president. With the economy still in free-fall, my spouse and I found jobs and a nice little house with a sixteen percent fixed thirty year mortgage. And then began the decades of prosperity and relative peace. My children have never known hard economic times. They have no idea what it is to work hard and find no reward. Ronald Reagan saw the opportunity that the last bad times offered, and he used that opportunity to the lasting benefit of a generation.

Now we face another such opportunity, but with a very different president-elect at the helm. I do not think that presidents really control the large events such as hurricanes and financial markets, but how they use the opportunity that bad times offer will affect us all for good or ill. Carter prolonged a recession by increasing taxes and trying to control inflation with price controls. He also aggravated the ongoing crisis in the Middle East, again prolonging that crisis. What little information President-Elect Obama has given us regarding how he will use the opportunity that current bad events offer suggests that he will emulate Carter. If so, my children will face what I faced thirty years ago or worse: they will graduate with good degrees and face unemployment; they will face higher taxes and consequent inflated prices; they will face shortages of key commodities; they will face ongoing crises abroad. Such a wonderful childhood they had, but what of their future?