NO LEADERSHIP WITHOUT CONSENSUS

"Trivial matters are handled promptly; important matters are never solved."

-- Gresham's Law

Dealing with society's problems -- whether at the federal level, in state government or at city hall -- has its good and bad moments, but no period of time is more disheartening than when answers and solutions are sought for important matters. As Gresham's Law suggests, there's no difficulty in handling the small problems and literally anyone can resolve these. It's the tough ones, the important matters, that defy easy solutions, and sometimes defy any solution at all.

As Bill Clinton deals with providing health care to those who have none and welfare programs that perpetuate dependency, Mel Carnahan also finds himself dealing with these issues and still others that impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of Missourians. In city halls around the state, environmental sins and omissions of the past have come back to haunt mayors in even the smallest of our communities.

Can Gresham's Law be correct? Are there no reasonable, effective answers to improved medical services? Is there no way to change the depressing lifestyles of those who must live from one welfare check to the next? Can any of us devise systems to preserve this beautiful world so that it can be enjoyed by our children's children?

Maybe Gresham is right, which is a horrible way to address these concerns, but the view must be considered. When our nation's founding fathers fashioned the Constitution under which we still live today, they were realistic enough to know they were not establishing a society that would be free of problems, even if they had no idea what they might be. What they attempted to do -- and succeeded -- was provide a framework of governance that would be as free of tyranny and monarchial whim as possible, while establishing certain essential freedoms that would grant the governed, with leadership, the power to correct abuses that were certain to occur.

Although it had no counterpart anywhere in the world, our Constitution provided, without saying so, a participatory system of governance in which all would take part and exercise not only their judgment but their presence and good will. While not as efficient, nor even sometimes as effective, as a unitary system in which power is granted to the people, the framers wanted to create a system in which power traveled the other way, from the people to those who governed. Mussolini may have made the trains in Italy run on time, but he had to bash a lot of heads to do it. Our founding fathers wanted a system in which the trains ran on time but no one had to be imprisoned or executed to accomplish the goal.

There is no way any document can guarantee that trains will run on time, only the freedom to devise a system to accomplish it. No constitution, regardless of how brilliantly conceived, can devise governments that will meet society's needs -- unless the governed decide these needs should be met. The trick in governing is not to devise perfect systems but to help the governed see the need for them. And, herein, lies the problem facing our nation, our state and our cities in 1994.

The problem is multiple. Our political leadership in the age of Carter or Reagan or Clinton is elected for one set of reasons and then finds itself enveloped by problems over which it has little control. Ronald Reagan may have been elected because of his conservative views and the mood of voters 14 years ago, but he was forced to overcome obstacles that defied his political agenda. So did Jimmy Carter, and so did George Bush. And so has Bill Clinton. And Mel Carnahan.

The would-be leader may over-promise and may offer programs that attract support, but once elected he faces realities far more demanding than those envisioned during an election campaign. The mark of leadership is to adapt to the changed political environment and offer solutions that involve not just the leader's advocates but his opponents as well. America's most productive moments have come when political barriers were the lowest and public consensus was the highest. It has had its darkest moments (Watergate, Vietnam, crime) when leaders were incapable of leading and became provincially political advocates.

The tragedy is not that any president fails but that Americans and Missourians are deprived of worthy goals by the inability or unwillingness of leaders to involve the public in their solution. Improved health care, either in the nation or our own state, will not occur until real leadership, as opposed to political leadership, occurs. Nor will we lift the poor from welfare nor resolve the awful problem of crime until our leaders learn how to formulate public consensus.