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Each night of my childhood, my dad tucked me into the warm recesses of bed with a story. I learned to battle swamp monsters as the moon bled light across the night sky. I faced mean friends, angry dogs, a hundred wild pirates with blades of sharp steel. Stories gave me strength, gave me a framework for understanding right and wrong. I do the same for my two young boys now, tell them fine stories full of strong jungle women and men who swing on vines, escape certain death. Stories define us - the ones we believe, the ones we tell each other, the ones we tell about our place in the universe.
Bill Bradley, in his new book, The New American Story, explains that there is a story that runs through America's history, a story that can be retold and brought up to date, built upon, a story that will take us in a good and noble direction. To make his point, he presents us with a series of what he says are accepted stories about different parts of our life as Americans - political, educational, environmental, economic.
I believe that Bradley believes that these are the prevalent stories in our society, and in fact they are quite recognizable. We hear them all the time. But they don't seem to be widely enough held that you could say that most people believe them. In fact, every one of them sounds like the stories that people across the isle from Bill - the Republicans, the Red State people - believe.
As a counterpoint to those stories, Bradley gives us examples of new stories that can take us somewhere productive, at least in ways that seem productive and good to him. Bravo for someone trying to come up with new stories, because we sure need them.
The question is - are Bradley's new stories just stories that, though they may correct some things, fail to address fundamental problems that only a radical new story could address?
In the beginning of The New American Story, Bradley quotes Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
Let's look at some of the parts of Bradley's New Story, and wonder as we look at them whether they are really addressing fundamental problems or not:
On America's role in the world, Bradley points out that in today's world, with its global connections of culture and economies, military force and unilateral thinking really doesn't work anymore. Iraq is a good example. If we want to achieve things for community, nation, and world, we have to think about each of these spheres of influence and life at the same time. Think and Act Locally, Think and Act Nationally, Think and Act Globally. These three forms of citizenship preclude the use of force as a tool for solving problems. It causes more problems than it solves. That's hard to argue with. It appears to be a story that is fact-based.
On the economy, Bradley presents the old story as the old trickle-down economics story, the one that leaves the economy to the market with little government direction or intervention. He talks about how individuals - all the way up to our federal government - are in debt, while trying to compete in a global economy full of people who work hard and for less than we can or want to do. Bradley points out that growth depends on investment, and investment depends on savings. Yet consumption represents 71% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, and savings a mere 1%. On top of that, Americans experience a huge inequality in their personal economic outcomes. That together with the fact that there are so many business opportunists nowadays who will buy and sell companies, play games with bookkeeping just to make a quick buck, is not a very pretty story.
Bradley's new economic story says that simply having the right levels of employment, inflation and productivity, though necessary, are not sufficient for us to achieve the quality of life by which we would measure our success as a society. For that, we need policies to set us in the right direction so that we can compete in the world market by offering products, services and ideas that are as good or better than those from anywhere else in the world. Policies, of course, means government with long-term thinking because only government can have long-term thinking. Businesses measure their success quarter to quarter, of course,
