The Lost Five Years

In the off-Broadway musical "The Last Five Years" a couple tells the story of their relationship from opposite ends of the time perspective. Cathy starts at the end of their marriage and works back to the first date, while Jamie moves in the opposite direction. The two characters meet only once in the production: in the middle, at their wedding.

I cannot help but wonder what this artistic device could teach us about what I'll call "The Lost Five Years." If one character could start today and work backward, and another started in 2003 and moved forward--perhaps meeting on election day in 2004-- what would the story be?

The character moving forward would start with a shocked, angry, and determined nation looking to shake off the dot.com bust and, much more importantly, the grief of 9-11-01. The character moving backward would start with an anxious, angry, and exhausted nation looking to shake off the housing bust, and the legacy of years spent at war in dusty places. Unlike Cathy and Jamie, the intersection would not be a zenith of joy, but rather a surreal moment of uncertainty.

It now seems all too clear that the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004 was based on careful strategy rather than electoral enthusiasm. Under Karl Rove's Machiavellian machinations the country went to the polls to reelect W for two reasons: 1) Fear of terrorism, and 2) Fear of gays. By stressing the continued threat posed to "a nation at war," Rove was able to convince a great number of people that John Kerry was not trustworthy. He was in a word: risky. At the same time party activists ginned up panic over the suddenly omnipresent threat of gay marriage. By putting "marriage amendments" on the ballot in key swing states, and riling up the social conservative base, Rove's minions reached record conservative turn-out where it mattered most-- places like southeast Ohio.

Today we are faced with the results of this cynical approach to power: results that we can only realize in hindsight, or through the eye's of our time-twisting characters.

In reality we may need to expand the scope of our project. We could call it the lost 10 years. It seems to me that the country has just wasted a decade. It is probably too early to draw this type of sweeping conclusion, but I pose the question: what has the last decade been about? What major advance have we made? In the span of the 1980's we went from the height of the Cold War to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The economy transformed from industrial to service. In the 1990's we went from an Internet used by a handful of academics to a dot.com for every conceivable product. The economy was internationalized and productivity soared as information technology took hold. Perhaps it is appropriate that we don't even know for sure what to call this decade-- the zeroes? That seems to be exactly what we've gotten out of it.

I submit that the entire decade has turned out to be a non-stop attempt to paper over problems and apply bandages to festering wounds. After the stock bubble burst in 2000 we received massive monetary and fiscal stimulus to prevent the economy from tanking. After 9/11 we received massive monetary and fiscal stimulus to prevent the economy from tanking. The result was a massive growth in cheap credit. While we weren't creating many new jobs or transforming the economy in a meaningful way, we were getting inflated home prices and a false sense of wealth. Unable to catch bin-Laden or even defeat the Taliban, we were busy molesting old ladies at airports and confiscating shampoo. Meanwhile Pakistan, Iran, and Russia slid further into instability as our war strategy for Iraq leered and veered to the point of virtual defeat before being turned around at the eleventh hour. The tax cuts that were keeping the economy out of the morgue were working, but the government was ballooning out of control under the strains of such "quick fix" political posturing as the bloated farm bill and the Medicare prescription drug entitlement.

The Republican Party ceased to govern effectively or even responsibly while the Democratic Party achieved near hysteria every time Dick Cheney drew a breath. Divorced from its historic principles at home and abroad, the GOP held itself together through 2004 in the way described above. By 2006 the gig was up and wheels were visibly coming off the cart. Not long after, the credit glut the country had feasted on for 8 years was showing signs of strain as housing prices began to collapse. So today we are left with two lingering wars, a who's who of international problem spots, a financial system in crisis, a government rapidly grasping control of the private sector, and a public exasperated and casting about desperately for a solution. At the same time one of our political parties is flirting with a generational collapse.

And so I find myself with the greatest level of cognitive dissonance. I voted for George Bush twice and always very enthusiastically. I still believe that given our choices at the time and knowing what we knew at the time these were the correct choices. However it now seems clear that regardless of whether W is to blame, he has presided over a period of striking disaster. We will never know how things might have ended differently but here we are. So how then to proceed? As the country has bumbled along trying to keep its head above water, it has achieved the late stages of an addict: strung-out, irrational, depressed and staring into the abyss of self-destruction.

And in this lies my dilemma: Electing John McCain seems somehow just another band-aid, another short-term fix with no long-term view. I find almost no manner in which I think John McCain would have a transformative presidency. I don't see a reformed entitlement paradigm, no ownership society, no decline in the growth of government. With a hostile Congress, a weak economy, and a cantankerous populous I'm afraid a President McCain would bob and weave with the same reactionary incoherence displayed by his campaign. At the same time the presidency of Barack Obama seems highly risky. No candidate has had a thinner resume or a more leftist instinct than Sen. Obama. I disagree with virtually every policy he proffers and harbor serious doubts about his foreign policy proclivities.

I cannot and will not vote for Senator Obama. It is against my judgement and my convictions to actively support a man who stands against so many of the things I believe. But if he is to win, I hope that the victory is decisive and the judgement clear. I hope the public will regard the victory as a sort of reboot, and that this restores confidence and a sense of purpose. I hope the country can start to rebuild itself in all the myriad ways it has gone of the tracks. I hope that the Republican Party uses the shock therapy to rise from its own ashes. And I hope that our next five or ten years are about some as yet unknowable progress in the fascinating story that America still has to tell.