Editorial
By David Gergen
Time to face the real issues
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On May 10, 1940, As Britain trembled at Hitler's sweep across Europe, the king summoned a new prime minister to power. The next few days were a turning point, as Winston Churchill rallied his people and they valiantly held off the Nazi onslaught. Central to his leadership, as biographer Martin Gilbert points out, was his decision to form a unity government--one in which political rivals were forced to put aside old hatreds and, together, face the future. Churchill told his fellow citizens: "Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future."
One remembers that as our presidential campaign descends into the muck over who did what to whom during the Vietnam War. John Kerry can be justly proud of his heroism, but we have heard enough from him on the subject. And we are hearing altogether too much from George Bush's supporters as they try to smear Kerry. The president should call off the attack dogs, and both sides should move on.
As Churchill would warn us, we have far more urgent and serious challenges to face as a people, and this presidential campaign is where we should be hashing them out. We need to stop hiding from harsh realities and get on with it.
Heart and minds.
For starters, we desperately need a more comprehensive, bipartisan, and sustainable strategy to win this war on terrorism. So far, we have relied almost exclusively on our military power. While our troops have performed extremely well, it is now clear that our guns alone will not prevail.
Terror threats are spreading, not shrinking. Last year brought the highest number of terror attacks in 20 years. We may have broken up al Qaeda at the top, but there are ominous signs of a grass-roots terrorism movement growing up in its place. Iraq itself remains chaotic, and we seem unlikely to realize our ultimate goal: creation of a stable anchor and a steady source of oil in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Iran edges toward a nuclear bomb, and if it succeeds, the Saudis may follow.
Our next president--Bush or Kerry--must be willing to use force but must combine that threat with a far more robust, imaginative effort to win hearts and minds. We must reach out more effectively to friends in Europe and Asia and, yes, the United Nations. More to the point, we must convince the vast Muslim communities--almost 20 percent of the world's population--that we are on their side. Progress will depend on sending a better message, but equally so, on helping them live better lives. One in five Arabs lives on less than $2 a day; two in five are under 14 years of age and are running out of hope. A hopeless young man is a ticking time bomb.
Increasingly, we can see that the war on terrorism is also linked to our lack of a serious strategy on energy. Back in the 1970s, when President Nixon issued the first calls for energy independence, the United States relied upon foreign nations for 30 percent of its oil. We have been marching backward ever since; today, we depend on foreigners for 60 percent of our oil--and the number keeps rising. Uncertainty in those foreign markets has pushed oil prices up to nearly $50 a barrel, throwing a monkey wrench into our economy. Just imagine the economic calamity if Saudi Arabia were to crack up.
Our next president will fail the country unless he organizes an urgent, bipartisan campaign to increase production as well as conservation of fossil fuels. Liberals will have to go along with more drilling, conservatives with stiffer mileage standards, and everyone will have to swallow hard to accept higher taxes on gasoline. Down the line, if we invest wisely, will be a future of renewable energy, but we can't diddle until that dawn arrives.
In the best book of the political season, Running on Empty, Pete Peterson warns of yet another challenge for the next president: the prospect of a financial collapse. Over the past four years, the Bush administration has tragically squandered a chance to reform Medicare and Social Security while we still had surplus funds to pay for a transition. Now the projected $5 trillion surplus is gone, and we are staring at some $5 trillion in new debts over the coming decade. That will make reform far more difficult, but as baby boomers approach retirement, we can no longer hide from the coming crunch.
One could go on with a litany of other critical challenges facing the next administration: the lack of good jobs, the meltdown of our healthcare system, the continuing inadequacy of our schools. But the point isn't to make up a list. Rather, the point is that in the tumult of this angry presidential campaign, we not let ourselves be distracted by irrelevancies. The candidates should be much straighter with us about our choices, so that we can face the future with the courage of a great people.
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