U.S. NEEDS TO GET ITS CRISES STRAIGHT

KENNETT, Mo. -- One of the most remarkable, but least remembered, truths about life in America is the lightning-like change in what can be called the National Crisis Agenda.

A bare few weeks ago, the nation was torn by the ballot-counting fiasco in Florida, a period during which we not only didn't know who had won the presidency, but whether the next moment would produce still another dramatic event that would throw our nation into a second War Between the States.

Some of us held our breaths so long we acquired the complexion of Ted Kennedy.

Passing from the electoral crisis to the next one, involving the transition from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush, many began noting characteristics of the newly elected chief executive they had failed to see during the interminable campaign that occupied the entire nation for more than a year.

Candidate Bush, the one with the smirk and upraised thumb, was transformed, as if by magic, to President Bush, the friendly, captivating and serious uniter who had only days before been the evil divider as perceived by nearly 50 million Americans.

As for the man many voted for, although not always enthusiastically, he wisely exited from public view and retired to the Endowed Home for Involuntarily Retired Public Officials. A few years from now, most of us will have trouble recalling his name.

With one national crisis after another passing from public view, it was only a matter of time until another collective drama arose from the deep to haunt us. It seems that despite larger and larger projected budget surplus totals, we dare not ignore the threat of a national recession, ending what has been called the longest economic prosperity in the history of the world.

This claim overlooks the several previous extended periods enjoyed by citizens of the Roman Empire, the English and Spanish exploratory periods and the post-Vietnam prosperity of Japan, but its hyperbole is close enough to the truth to give validity to the economic rhetoric the country has claimed, regardless of its temporal nature.

One of the confounding thoughts about the predicted onrushing recession that is either upon us or about to impoverish us is the menu of future national crises we will have to face as President Bush attempts to bestow artificial respiration to his earlier promises when they arrive on Capitol Hill.

The pundits tell us this is a particularly critical period in our nation's history, noting that the president's successes and failures will have a greater impact on our lives than whether we have just recently lost the family farm in a swindle perpetrated by some dot-com entrepreneur.

Before the election fiasco began winding down, the columnists, editorialists and pundits who have volunteered to do all the heavy thinking for the rest of us breathlessly announced that we had been through one horrific crisis.

Given the small turnout percentage, it is hard to argue that citizens too alienated or apathetic to vote were likely to engage in a civil war over who won. Of course many people cared and argued deeply about the election, but most Americans did not find their lives disrupted by it. Most were involved in it vicariously or passively, if at all. And according to surveys, even a majority of Gore voters were willing to accept a Bush presidency.

The crisis that the politicians were so quick to assign to the ballot counting interlude seemed more and more remote every passing day, particularly when the loser managed to invoke God's name six times in a brief 8-minute concession speech.

As crises go, the differences between the presidential candidates during the campaign were not inconsequential, but they were not always pervasive either.

An excess of partisanship seemed to produce a cautious centrism that made incremental change all but inevitable. I'm not suggesting that political differences have no place in today's national dialogue, but must they be ubiquitous?

The two parties seek to highlight differences for the simple reason that, without such rhetoric, they have little reason to exist. "Believe with me or suffer the consequences" is a mantra that even house-siding salesmen utilize to enhance their profit totals.

The issues that divide Americans as a nation and Missourians as a state are not whether Al Gore or Jim Talent won a majority at the polls last November. These issues are, in the long run, more trivial than substantive, more compromising than arguable. Election results are temporal, not permanent; more casual than revolutionary.

The issues that divide us as people as Americans and as Missourians aren't trivial or amenable to compromise. The crucial issues are not whether the Republicans or Democrats should control the Legislature in Jefferson City or Capitol Hill in Washington. The real issues are the profound questions about liberty, equality, order, accountability and respect for everyone of us. The issues are about abortion rights, gun control, the death penalty, health care, freedom of speech, religion, education, the environment and sexual preference.

Cautious centrism can't address questions like these. It can only finesse them. Nor can it resolve the worst problems that confront us as a state and nation, like elderly care, criminal system inequities, the abuse of children, a drug epidemic nearly out of control, the growing economic disparity between our citizens, and the racial injustice that continues to blacken the reputation of the Land of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt.

The real dilemmas for America cannot be resolved by the political successes of either party's candidates but by the insistence of an informed, enlightened public that needs solutions for the very real and genuine crises that impact the lives of all of America's citizens.

~Jack Stapleton is editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.