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Warning: Beware of Political Giddiness
Like many
people, I'm excited to see how people are
stepping forward to engage in this year's
presidential race. Indeed, as I travel the
country there's a growing contagion of
giddiness spreading throughout the land. But,
lurking beneath the surface of our national
"feel-good" is a warning we must heed, or else
run the risk of promoting false
hope.
The challenge before us is to not
misread people's shared anger and renewed
energy for common ground about how they wish to
move ahead. The general urge for change is not
at all the same as an endorsement or readiness
for particular change. The presidential
candidates must know this, and so too must the
rest of us who see ourselves as catalysts for
change.
What we are witnessing in this
election cycle is people saying "Enough Is
Enough!" over the state of the union and our
overly partisan and rancorous politics. They
believe that, as a society, we have failed to
make real progress on the pressing issues
before us, and that matters have only gotten
worse in recent years. Things have come to a
head.
But, whenever an impasse is at
work, the desire for change should not be
equated with agreement on what to do. This is
true when any of us hit a personal impasse and
feel stuck without the clarity about how to
proceed. It was true when I first started
working in Flint, Michigan in 1997, when I
heard people say, "This can't go on!" and yet
there was a clear absence of agreement on what
should be done. It is true within
organizations that hit an impasse, and for the
nation, too. Let's be clear: At impasse, people
want relief – and fast; and they want to
believe that change is on the way.
And
yet, at impasse most communities (and in this
case, the nation) lack the civic foundation for
widespread change to take place. The right
conditions, capacity, collective will, and
common ground to produce such change are
missing. Go to any community and you can hear
people talk about this lack of civic foundation
– about the community's fragmented efforts,
negative norms for public discourse, lack of
trust in its leaders, and dearth of catalytic
organizations that truly work for the common
good, not just for their own good.
The
danger before us now is to assume that the
energy emerging from this presidential cycle
will automatically convert into enthusiasm and
sustainable support for real change. That would
be a dire mistake. Sadly, that may be the
direction in which we're headed now, a
direction rooted in growing giddiness, which
will lead to false hope. My intent in raising
this concern is not to dampen people's current
enthusiasm, or to be a naysayer. Quite the
opposite, my own work is rooted in the sense of
possibility that is created when people tap
their own potential, join together, and act on
their shared aspirations.
But, I also
know that change requires us to root what we
say and do in reality - that is, we must root
our programs and promises in the very
conditions we face, and infuse in our actions
and words clarity about what must be changed.
We must be clear about understanding the
capacities required to produce such change. It
is from this interplay between a clear sense of
what we seek and where we presently are that we
can engender authentic hope.
If we
truly want change, we must carefully harness
the enthusiasm and energy emerging from the
current impasse and marry it to clear-headed
realism informed by our most cherish ideals.
Only then we can deliver on authentic
hope.