Isn't it ironic that

[Kevin]

Hi,
Well, if it is, then they're failing in that, too.

--Pete

I'm curious if you've ever felt this nation has been going alright. I'm not trying to poke a jab at you. I'm only 33, so it was right around 1988 or so (when I was around 13) that I started to really follow politics at any real level and it was still a few years after that when I finally had a few more tools to understand how more things actually worked so I wasn't just following politics in an ideal not fully informed way. If you don't have a basic understanding of economics you can't really follow politics fully since it plays such a huge role in them, I didn't get that understanding till I was a junior in high school (91-92) and I didn't get a deeper understanding till my sophomore year in college (94-95). So while I started following stuff earlier, I bought into rhetoric that I later learned was just that and not real information. So I have to color try and go back and look at what I had believed in the light of what I had later learned.

As I was growing up, I was never comfortable with the leadership of this country. And the economic boon that Clinton presided over I've got a much better understanding of how fake a lot of it was, and that some of what we are seeing now is a result of people doing unsound things back then (some of it is a result of people doing unsound things more recently as well, but it traces back farther than just a few years) which makes me less happy about that. History tells me that I don't think I would have been happy with the Reagan years either. So it's hard for me to tell, all I was really aware of were the Bush - Clinton - Bush years. And it was really only the last Clinton - Bush years that I really had enough basic tools to make some informed decisions on some of the bigger issues. My childhood that I can remember was under the Reagan years and we were a very poor family, though it would be very unfair to place all that on the general direction of the country. I'm very aware that pretty much all the clothes I had as a kid were Christmas gifts from my grandmother or hand me downs. I remember having to go to the office everyday at school to get my free school lunch ticket for several years and even after that it was always reduced price because of where our families income was. I remember that I got exactly 1 serving of cereal and milk (measured out with the measuring cups) so that Mom and Dad could exactly plan the food budget. So I never have fond memories of the Reagan days.

The lack of corporations, with the exception of a few of the high tech electronic and a few of the pharmaceutical industries, not really reinvesting any of the profits into R&D or infrastructure upgrades, always worried me as well. I didn't ever expect them to stay leaders but it made me worry about major US industry even staying competitive. Some of that has born fruit some of it I've learned was unfounded and that I was too idealistic on some of my views. :)

And I've never been happy with any energy policy either, though Clinton did do some stuff to try and stimulate alternatives, but I don't think anyone in power was really worried about it. I again didn't always have the tools to fully understand those issues either so I have to hindsight some of that, but that is another major area that I've not felt has been dealt with well. It's like the corporate infrastructure, we as a nation on all levels tend to sit on whatever is working until it breaks while only giving a cursory look at other options, then scramble to try and recover. I realize this is general human (and many other animals) nature. But part of the point of leading at any level is to try and anticipate issues and plan ahead, not just steer the ship blindly. Sure you'll make mistakes doing that as well, but generally they don't seem to be as catastrophic.

But basically I've never felt we've had a good leader and I became very aware that our national deficit was only sustainable as long as the dollar was the strongest currency in the world (which it was for most of my life), but I predicted a major collapse of the US economy as soon as I read about the EU (even ended up writing a paper on it for a class). I knew that whatever currency they used would weaken the dollar enough and that a rising Asian market would help, assuming the Euro didn't just instantly come out a lot stronger on it's own. Once that tipping point was reached our debt would start to really show the effects that a strong dollar kept hiding and the effects would start to be seen by the "average citizen" beyond just the tax rates that most of them only think about when they think about the effects of government spending. There is certainly more too it, but I just envisioned that as the first big tipping point/issue as I was learning more about how economies work and learning more about how individual and corporate financing worked and I believed for a long time that Alan Greenspan was the most powerful man in the world, though that is only true on a few levels.

So I really do wonder if folks with more life experience have ever felt the nation was truly going well and not just looking like it was going well as we covered up but didn't work to solve major underlying issues. And while I only mentioned the presidents it isn't just their leadership (or lack there of) that has been poor. I watched some governors, senators, alderman/city council, mayors, school board reps, etc do some pretty stupid things. Of course I also watched them make decisions that I didn't feel they, or I, were qualified to make but that had to be made and sometimes they were right and sometimes they were wrong. But the general trend of just not understanding economics in this country and not trying to work to fix the underlying issues has always had me worried. And no I don't claim to understand how to fix it all, even in an ideal sense.

If everyone had stopped spending and always saved and never taken investment risks, our economy would have collapsed as well. Oh and I don't feel we've gotten more than about halfway at most through this current collapse. I'm pretty sure things are going to get significantly worse. Since we are dealing with a weaker dollar and the effects that has as well as a bit of an energy crisis, I still think things are going to get worse before they get better and that the next president (or the one after them) will get credit they don't deserve for "pulling us out" of a situation that we'll eventually work our way out of anyway. Certainly government policies will play a role in how deep it goes and how long it stays down, but they aren't the only factor.

Of course maybe I'm wrong in thinking that social issues are generally the least of our concerns when it comes to electing leaders. When I was younger they were what colored my views the most and it's not that they don't carry any weight, but I'm way more concerned with economic, energy, and foreign policy than other issues. I guess I figure if we have energy and money and not everyone hates us, that we'll have time to work on the other stuff. :)