Bob Schwartz

If you want to find the real issues that need addressing, just look at what is not talked about in the election campaign.

The economy has been a topic at a very superficial level, but the deeper issues have been avoided like poison. From a political standpoint, this is completely understandable. But as for problem solving, it is dangerous.

The economy is in the midst of a structural, existential transformation. Big time. One reason not to talk about it is that economics is substantially psychological, depending on a degree of optimism, and no one wants to enable pessimism and tank an already fragile economy. Another reason for politicians to avoid the topic is that they either have no good strategies, or the strategies require the sort of complex and long-winded discussion that citizens supposedly tune out or reject.

Too bad. We have to have “the talk” before it’s too late. It is a little like parents not having the sex talk with their children, only to discover those same children unexpectedly expecting children of their own.

The political question is who is most able to lead us into and through that talk, when the time comes that we can no longer delay and deny it. The answer is that we need leaders who are curious, creative, courageous and flexible. That doesn’t mean discarding guiding principles of ancient and venerable origin, principles such as honesty, integrity, compassion. But it does mean that trying to fit the future of the economy into the paradigms of the past is like watching a child trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. Which is not nearly as frightening as watching grown-up politicians trying to pound a 21st century economy into a 19th/20th century hole.

Predicting tomorrow’s election is a fool’s errand. But here’s a prediction you can take to the bank: This will be the last election that addresses the economic future in such simplistic and maladaptive terms. Because if the immediate future of leadership doesn’t end the tired nostrums and doesn’t include these big vision, big picture, new world considerations of the changes happening right now, the economic context of the next Presidential election could be much, much worse than this one.

The great political lesson of the Great Depression was to fix the broken economy and ease the people’s pain. More than politics, this was a moral lesson too. Anything less—one and not the other—would have simply been wrong, politically and morally.

In many situations—the medical is one of them—it may not be possible to fix what’s broken without causing more pain in the process. But that doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility to do everything possible to at least diminish that pain, both the original and whatever has been added.

In some ways, this is precisely where the politics of this election sits right now.

Even with the complex metrics of how bad things have been and how much or how fast they may be improving, neither party is unaware that there are problems to be fixed.

The Republican party wants us to believe that they are the ones to better fix these problems. Maybe they are, maybe not.

But the real distinction concerns the pain.

The Republicans seem to say that the pain already being felt and the pain that the fixes may inflict are a necessary and unavoidable phenomenon. Easing the pain will only make things worse and extend the problems, something we cannot afford. In response, some have pointed out that a number of the Republican policy makers are themselves feeling little or no pain.

The Democrats, in a position that is somehow ridiculed, seem to believe that while pain can never be eliminated, there is every reason to ease it whenever possible. That won’t always be possible, but at least it is worth exploring and trying.

In the medical context, there are still people who refuse to take painkillers, believing that it somehow makes you weak or that you are subject to becoming an addict. But medicine also recognizes that pain itself is tremendously stressful on the body, and the healing itself can be compromised by deep, chronic, unrelieved pain.

The same thing goes for the body politic. For those of us who were not there for the Great Depression, we have only family stories or history books. While our current woes are thankfully not that severe, there is plenty of pain to go around, and some of will it stay around for a while. Easing that pain is every bit as important as fixing problems. Mercy is never weakness, whatever some politicians may say.

The Great Recession did not turn into a(nother) Great Depression, and the prospects of continuing towards prosperity, or at least less economic insecurity, seem good. The big question that we now have a limited luxury to ask is this: Could we have survived a Great Depression? The study of that question may be the most valuable we can make.

The Great Depression has spawned an industry for scholars, historians, and thinkers of all stripes, and that has been a good thing. Systems and people are seen truest at their moments of greatest stress, and hardly anything before or since qualifies

Looking at how we managed to survive the last Great Depression – whether it was leadership and action, the normal cycle correcting a horrific anomaly, the fortunate unfortunate impact of a global war, or all/none of the above – tells us something about how we might handle the next. A couple of small starting points:

Creativity matters. Dismissing creative civic solutions out of hand and out of political pique is something we can never afford, and in the worst times something we should never tolerate. Love him or hate him, FDR got boldly creative, pushing the bounds of constitutionality, convention, and common sense. But when things fall apart as they did, common sense is cold comfort. Herbert Hoover, who was in fact a man of civic accomplishment, lacked the boldness and sense of adventure needed for the unprecedented times.

The question is: At that moment in 2008, if things had gone from bad to worse, would there have been the will to be creative and to try things, even if that meant setting aside ideology and political advantage. The answer is that nothing at the time, and nothing today, tells us that there would have been.

Optimism matters. One of the latest political ads from Rick Santorum depicts a cautionary apocalyptic vision of Obama America, something straight out of the Book of Revelation. During the Great Depression, there was no need for a fanciful version of the Apocalypse; it was already there. Books, songs, and movies painted an accurate vision of hardship, but they also tried for uplift and hope. The best and smartest politicians realized that when the spirit of America was already broken, the last thing people needed was a reminder that things could and might yet get worse. Happy days might not have been there again, as the song said, but there was no point in saying that they never would.

So as with the dismissal of creative solutions, the question is, in the face of a 21st century Great Depression, whether today’s politicians could find a way to set aside the darkness and pessimism for a brighter vision of good times ahead, even if it meant faking optimism, even if it meant losing political advantage. There is little evidence of that.