Posted by
Doug McQuiston on Friday, November 21, 2008 4:23:46 PM
"I think ... sort of the bottom feels like it is falling out for many people... They sense there's a total lack of leadership in Washington, that the White House is silent, the treasury secretary has been battered, the Federal Reserve can't speak up. These automakers come up to Capitol Hill and fail. And the president-elect is silent in Chicago."
Mr. Gergen then calls on either President Bush or President-elect Obama to "speak up soon," as though without some stirring speech by our President, Americans won't know enough to get out of bed in the morning and drive to work.
Are you offended by this line of reasoning, too? I hate to have to point this out to someone like Mr. Gergen, (who has, after all, served as a high-level advisor to four past Presidents), but here in America, our politicians don't "lead" us--
we lead them! The President, his Cabinet, Congress, all of them-- they
work for us. We don't need their "leadership" in order to fill our roles in what is left of our free-market economy. In fact, we would probably have had an easier time of it if we could have avoided some of the recent displays of "leadership" coming out of Congress, like the $2 trillion bailout with no end in sight, the Fannie-Freddie meltdown, profligate and unnecessary spending paid for with borrowed Chinese capital, etc.
I don't know about you, (or Mr. Gergen), but I am not in the habit of checking my voicemail every morning for instructions from the President or the "leaders" in Washington before I go about the business of waking up, working hard, supporting my family, and trying to serve my community. I don't need politicians to "lead" me. Particularly in tough economic times, the last thing in the world I want my politicians to do is to feel that they have to "do something," or "say something" to "lead" us out of the financial crisis they themselves in large measure caused. They did that already, with the bailout, and we can see how that's worked.
Instead, I want my President and President-elect to do exactly what they're doing-- stay out of the way, keep their mouth shut, and let the market work itself out. If we want them to do something specific, maybe we'll clamor for it. In the meantime, the best thing they could do right now is leave for the Thanksgiving Recess and not come back to Washington until after Inauguration Day. The market will rise and fall, and rise again, unsuccessful companies may fail, be bought and turned around eventually or broken up and sold, and jobless claims may rise, then fall, as they will certainly do no matter how "active" Congress or the White House tries to be in the next few months.
It will be ugly, but far less ugly than it could be if our politicians start feeling like they have to "lead" us.
Spare me the "leadership" that emanates from Washington, D.C.