Centerfield

The Real Issue

We spend a lot of time discussing the issue of the day, whatever it may be. We all have opinions about tax cuts, the progress of the war on terror, and the occupation in Iraq.

The remarkable thing, I think, is that we rarely give much thought to the real big issue -- the one likely to have more impact on our lives than any other. There isn't much general recognition or acknowledgement that all these smaller issues are strongly related to one big central issue.

Consider the tax cuts. We have a debate about whether the president's tax plan, or any variation thereof, will spark economic growth and get the economy moving again. Some say it will, some say it won't. Some call it a "job creator". Some say it is irrelevant to jobs. We had the same debate during the president's first year in office, when he succeeded in enacting a $1.3 trillion cut.

We discuss the pros and cons endlessly. But the real answer is "none of the above". Tax cuts will neither solve our problems, nor will they prevent us from solving our problems. The markets have been in the doldrums for almost three years now, and the reason they haven't recovered isn't tax policy. It's all the uncertainty surrounding the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and the international turmoil we've experienced since that day.

The markets waited. People chose not to invest until they got a better sense of where this is all headed. We spent almost a year in the lead-up to the Iraq war in economic limbo, which no combination of fiscal or economic policies would have solved.

The real issue in America today is stability and confidence. How do we feel about where we are headed? Do we feel the world will be a safe place in the near term? The medium term? The long term? Do we feel confident enough to invest? To spend?

When the answers to those questions are "yes", we will have a bright future. People will stop losing their jobs. The economy will grow again.

So long as the answers are "maybe", or "gee I don't know" -- so long as they trigger queasy feelings in your stomach -- then we as a nation will not move forward. We will not retake our place as the world's most dynamic, high-growth economy.

We should treat this as the core issue in evaluating any leader's performance or prospects.

For example, we should consider whether President Bush can take us down this path. The markets have been recovering for the last few weeks. The Dow is up 20%, the NASDAQ up 35%. It's possible that we're at the beginning stages of a general return to confidence as a nation.

It's also true, however, that tensions are on the rise with Iran, and we have very serious, unresolved issues with North Korea. The Bush approach has been an aggressive one. The administration hopes that by defeating one rogue nation, we can intimidate the others.

The question, now, is whether we can. Will the North Korean regime now capitulate and give up its recently-revived nuclear program? That issue will most likely come to a head within the next year. If we find ourselves in the lead-up to war again, that may well shake our sense of national confidence. The prospect of a Korean war is far more serious than the war in Iraq.

The essential insight of American government today is that foreign policy is economic policy. How we handle these sticky, post 9/11 issues will set the tone for everything else. We cannot be strong economically without a strong and effective foreign policy.

That's what we should think about. And that should be the basis of our choice of leaders.

Will Bush take us in a direction that returns stability and confidence to our nation?

If not, can any of those nine guys who sat on the stage for the first Democratic debate do the job? Do we have someone who combines an effective plan for dealing with international issues with a capacity to instill confidence in consumers and business leaders?

Quite a few of the folks who sat on that stage have chosen to run on populist, anti-corporate themes. They're running on the basis of protecting the little guy from what the big guy might do to him. This reinforces negative general attitudes toward business, while telling business leaders they're not likely to have a favorable environment under a new administration.

Instead of anti-corporate populism -- instead of focusing on the big, bad corporations -- the real winning message has to do with confidence -- bringing back an era of optimism, spending, growth, jobs, and everything else we had just a few years ago.

It's an amalgamation of themes struck by Reagan in both his 1980 and 1984 campaigns, drawn into a post-Clinton context. We should be #1, as we were during the Clinton years. There's a real feeling that we should. But we haven't felt confident enough to return to that era of prosperity.

This should be the dominant political theme on the moment -- why we are so nervous, and how to regain that sense of optimism and confidence as a nation.

America #1 again -- that's the basic theme, and the basic question for us as a nation.