Last week I
told you that I had “banned” the phrase
“civic engagement” from the Institute’s
work and I got quite a reaction – some in
support, others not. My point was simply that
engagement needs to be more about people and
impact, and less about endless discussions
over inputs and process. For people in the
country want to re-engage and get to work; at
issue is our response.
We sit amid
the morass of a continuing recession, two wars,
and the BP oil disaster, to mention just the
highlights of the nation’s current
challenges. As I travel the country, there is
a deepening sense the nation is barreling off
course. People are searching for, well… a
sense of “hope.” But experience tells us
that the upcoming mid-term elections won’t
be the tonic. They will surely produce more
cynical electoral maneuvering from both sides
of the aisle and from all quarters (including
the so-called Tea Party).
The current
path doesn’t bode well for our collective
mood. Some observers are comparing this period
to the 1970s when then President Carter gave
his infamous “malaise speech.” In
yesterday’s New York Times, the columnist
Ross Douthat wrote about a growing
“pessimism bubble” that, much like a
contagion, is spreading throughout the country
and taking on a life of its own. Douthat
suggested that a little optimism would do us
all good. His point: we should take comfort
from the nation’s record of bouncing back
from bad times.
But where
will this optimism come from? From the people,
I say. But nothing is automatic, and unless we
take decisive action, such optimism will not
materialize.
Wherever I
go people express deep frustration, even anger
about corporate wrong-doing, double-talking
politicians and problems such as the BP oil
crisis where it seems no one is in charge. The
current state of affairs, on one level, is the
continuation of many years of people’s
disgust with politics and public life – where
their reality was constantly distorted, and
where they felt little control over what is
happening around them.
And yet, on
another level, there is something totally
different at work nowadays – something we
can productively tap into. More than at any
other time I’ve been working in politics and
public life, people today want to re-engage and
reconnect with each other. There is a genuine
hunger to be part of something larger than
ourselves. People want to come back into
community life.
People’s
desires transcend politics. This urge is not
about the election of one individual or
another, though that’s certainly important to
people. Rather, what I hear is people talking
the ways in which we choose to live with one
another and the fundamental nature of
community. I do not pretend to know where all
this is heading and where it will end up.
But what I
do know is that people want to get to work –
with their neighbors, their friends, their
co-workers, and their fellow community members.
They want to make a real difference. They want
to make a dent in the challenges before us. In
short, they want to help change the very
trajectory of the country.
There’s
more than enough work to do in our country –
from supporting returning soldiers from Iraq
and Afghanistan, to cleaning up oil-stained
beaches, to truly working with kids to gain a
leg up in school and at home. We need to
mobilize our nation to do the nation’s work.
This will require that we genuinely engage
people in conversation about setting a common
purpose for taking action – and then creating
ways to act. For it is only through our joint
efforts that we can do meaningful things, be
part of something larger than ourselves, and
regain some semblance of control over our
future. It is then that we will burst through
the pessimism bubble and generate real
hope.