A debate coach will tell his team that when they argue the negative they must first demonstrate the need for change. That’s why it’s called the negative: one must first bad-mouth the affirmative — the status quo — and then propose a new solution.
There’s a lot of that bad-mouthing going on in the Republican primary battles just now.
One of the candidates — it doesn’t matter which one — celebrated his victory Wednesday morning with the promise he would lead America out of the wilderness into prosperity and observed it is “a critical time” in our country.
As a matter of fact, it is not a critical time in our country. The Dow Jones closed above 13,000 Tuesday for the first time since 2008. Unemployment is falling, not rising. The war in Iraq is over. The war in Afghanistan is winding down. Osama bin Laden is dead. Medical science continues to make solid progress against virulent diseases and in repairing the injuries that would have killed or crippled us just a few years ago. Our crime rates continue to fall even as our population rises. Housing starts are on the rise.
Life in America is a warm, spring breeze in comparison to that in a very great many nations.
More than that, we have gone through our last great crisis and are on the other side of it.
The United States was truly in a time of crisis in 2008. The credit crisis we faced then and which Europe is still combating was a lulu. But even the Great Recession didn’t create more unemployment than the recession of the 1980s did. We muddled through the 1980s and then moved into the 1990s when the economy soared, taxes were raised and the federal budget was balanced.
Another “crisis” was weathered and, through both thick and thin, at least 90 percent of the nation’s workers were employed and life was so good in America that immigrants poured in by the millions.
WHOEVER WINS the presidency in November will reap the harvest of today’s ongoing economic recovery that is, to be sure, creeping forward at a snail’s pace. Still, it’s creeping in the right direction.
This isn’t to argue the economic and social policies of the regime in power in 2013 won’t make a difference. They will, of course, but only at the margins, because major changes aren’t needed and therefore are unlikely.
What is needed is a sunnier attitude on the campaign trail.
Perhaps as the weather warms and more campaign stops feature outdoor rallies, spring will prove infectious. It should be difficult for any candidate to holler that the country is going to hell in a handbasket while being cooled by a light breeze under a clear sky lighted by a bright sun as they look out over a lot full of SUVs, gleaming vans and even a Cadillac convertible — or two.
The sight of hundreds — well, a few dozen anyway — of very well fed voters along with the four-wheeled evidence of a rich land should reassure them of our nation’s prosperity and ability to endure at least until Nov. 6.
Spring is our hope for a little civility in our politics — and a spoonful of optimism, too.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
