The New York magazine once again has provided excellent story telling that's both prescient and brilliantly delivered.
What they also do is to make most articles available soon after printing, so I admit I'm late to deliver on last week's articles - the joy of two children under one.
The articles in question are focused on the demise and repositioning of Fox but really do a great job of capturing the mood of the Republican choice for 2012. Check them out
http://bit.ly/kaqU8A http://bit.ly/ma4SGaThe Republican options for 2012 are farcical for sure but one has to wonder whether the whole strategy is to destroy as many competitors to Ged Bush so that he gets a clear run in 2016.
The only one that's holding out and currently a potential threat to Ged is Christie and he would be a fool to show his hand now.
The Republican candidacy is hilarious and ridiculous except for the fact that there are real issues on the table, which are being ignored.
One that's starting to get greater press coverage in the past 24hrs is Obama's - dare I say it - lack of leadership (read strategy or plan) on the economy. You really get the sense that he is clueless on this subject. It's a tough and unchartered journey for sure but I get the sense that he and his peeps are waiting for something to happen that forces the issue to go away. Clinton had Silicon Valley to reverse the deficit burdens of the Reagan and Bush Senior years, although history seems to have forgotten both sides of that story. I get the sense that Obama is after the same miracle but his chosen investments - automotive and personal health - are in my opinion unlikely places to find that sort of turn-around. I appreciate the liberal mindedness of both investments but as reported in yesterday's WSJ, the money given to GM alone was equal to giving every member of their workforce $750,000. Makes you think for a second what people could have done with that money given the entrepreneurial gene that exists in Americans. Of course this math is lazy because it doesn't take in to account all those who don't work for GM but count on GMs survival. The investment in medical is playing catch up to the rest of the developed world but the end result is half hearted and somehow the pharmaceutical and insurance companies are still being allowed to screw the end user. Nice idea poorly executed in my mind.
Personally, I think Obama should bite the bullet and invest heavily in infrastructure and instigate Roosevelt type policies to get this country at least building for the future. This to me would mean investment in transportation and the arts - emphasis on creativity. Creativity is the one thing we have over BRIC right now but for how long? China is investing heavily in creative studies for children because they've recognized that they're good at copying not inventing. On the upside, at least for now, India's creativity seems stuck in the musical movie making business, which is great but limiting for foreign export potential. Russia's creativity seems to be still focused on the elimination of any threat to the elite and Brazil's focus, at least for the next 6yrs, will be the World Cup and the Olympics. We have a window of time to be opportunistic.
Wall Street will say that China isn't a worry as their population growth in the next 20 yrs will only be slightly higher than the US but I think China's conscious shift to creativity will come back to bite us if we don't invest here now. Interestingly, having spent a lot of time in both China and India, I think India's creativity is there and with some organisation could play a major threat in the next decade especially in the area of technological innovation. Interestingly, Wall Street is also concerned with India's growth potential, as they acknowledge India's population growth being predicted to grow by 32% by 2030.
On the infrastructure side, my recommendation to Obama is to set about investing heavily in the high speed train service because the construction of a rail network would create thousands of jobs and start connecting cities in new ways. This will also be the only way to break the airline oligopoly and get the airline industry here to deliver a good experience. Yes it's a naive and purely selfish recommendation but it feels grand in scale and that's got to be good for the American spirit. Investment here would also start to get people off the roads. We can't continue to be the world's number one exhauster of oxygen.
Investment in the arts and creativity would be to encourage all forms of art to deliver to the community and to be a springboard to future creativity. Creativity is in the DNA of America but I worry that we currently live at two ends of the spectrum. At one end is the MBA obsession, which calls for the elimination of creativity for the benefit of rationality. On the other end are people who act as artists by being bums and doing nothing. It's the middle area that has so much potential and with the right investment, we could multiply the successes of small business start ups. We could multiply the successes in design. We could multiply the successes of the independent music business. We could multiply the successes in the fields of technological innovation, architecture...
The country does lack a plan and the plan that Obama could implement would be one of the bravest of any President but the success could be amazing. It would require levels of depth in organisation that this country typically struggles with but who knows, it could create an exciting period to be in America and that's what we need to feel right now. The economy's shift to positivity will only be a distraction from the opportunity a President like Obama could take right now.
Obama, it looks pretty certain you've got 5 years to do something amazing. Go for it and tomorrow's leaders who voted for you in 2008 may forgive you for letting them down these last few years.
Note: I know creativity is a behavior and art is a skill but what I'm suggesting is an investment in the skill and this in turn will act as an encouragement of the behavior. There are also many other ways to enable greater creativity and using the general term - creativity - above is meant to signify all of these possibilities.
