[Vision2020] "That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back"

[Ted Moffett]

C-Span2 BookTV featured a presentation by Thomas Friedman and Michael
Mandelbaum this past weekend, on their book "That Used to Be Us: How
America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come
Back."

The presentation can be watched at the following website:

http://www.booktv.org/Program/12878/That+Used+to+Be+Us+How+America+Fell+Behind+in+the+World+It+Invented+and+How+We+Can+Come+Back.aspx
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"That Used to Be Us" by Thomas L Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum –

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/17/friedman-mandelbaum-that-used-review

Friedman and Mandelbaum's prescriptions for an ailing American nation
are a tough task – one there is little hope of fulfilling

Peter Preston guardian.co.uk, Saturday 17 September 2011 18.30 EDT

There's a curious Dale Carnegie feel to this fascinating, chilling
book. On the one hand, two great American gurus – from the New York
Times and Johns Hopkins University respectively – pile on the doom of
superpower decline. Funereal orations don't come much more devastating
than this. But, on the other hand, they also roll out prescriptions
for recovery as smoothly as travelling salesmen.

Whatever happened to the American dream? Well, political partisanship
– fanned by the 24-hour Fox News cycle – happened, so that the
political system itself became snarlingly dysfunctional. Baby-boomer
complacency happened: a George W Bush misreading of Ronald Reagan's
deficit doctrine ordained too much heedless spending today with no
thought of tomorrow. Drive and investment for future growth? In 2009,
US consumers spent $7.1bn (£4.5bn) on potato crisps while Washington
spent $5.1bn (£3.2bn) on energy research and development. Education?
Tsinghua and Beijing universities are the biggest suppliers of PhDs in
the US while "49% of American adults do not know how long it takes the
Earth to revolve round the sun".

Throw in rampant obesity, deadbeat teachers, feeble leaders, greedy
bankers, ineffective regulators, gridlock, delusion, mountainous
debts, puny growth prospects, pension black holes and the Tea Party
movement – and what have you got? A catalogue of dismay that must,
apparently, be tackled under four terse headings.

First, a profound, discombobulating lack of focus – purpose lost since
the cold war was won. No threat, no concentration. Second, a chronic
failure to address obvious problems – education, energy shortages,
climate change. Third, the abandonment of the formula, built on
investment, industry and innovation, that made America strong. And,
last, a bitter, intransigent hostility that has soured any attempt at
consensus building. Make progress under all those headings and perhaps
the dream can live again.

It's an almighty ask as Friedman and Mandelbaum lay out their road to
sunnier uplands: "Learning, working, producing, relearning and
innovating twice as hard, twice as fast, twice as often and twice as
much" – because globalisation means that there aren't any no-brainer
white-collar or blue-collar jobs around any longer. Millions of jobs
have vanished through this downturn and they're not coming back. You
can, and in fact do have, many in manufacturing doing well, cranking
out profits again. What you don't have is the employment that used to
go with recovery. New jobs can only come from new enterprises, new
ideas, new creativity. The old routines have lost relevance. The world
of early George W, let alone Ronnie Reagan, is dead.

This means not just transforming school education but finding ways of
rescuing the millions of adults washed up on the cape of no hope by
digital change. It means agreeing that science trumps religion, that
Darwin trumps the Old Testament, that there is such a thing as global
warming. It means putting up taxes to pay off debt and pay for wars as
well as slashing spending that can't be afforded any longer. It means
recapturing the spirit of the New Deal – working together, making
common sacrifices for a common purpose.

But in practical terms most of this seems pretty unlikely, going on
totally impossible. Does consensus begin to bathe Capitol Hill in a
kindly light as the 2012 election nears? Isn't Rick Perry, the most
formidable Republican challenger, a global warming denier? Where does
Michelle Bachman fit in? And as for the big emerging answer (from page
334 on)of "shock therapy" via a third-way push for the White House by
some centrist-pragmatist who'll drag Republican and Democratic
extremists back towards the middle, don't even bother to think about
it. Friedman and Mandelbaum are probably right: most Americans want to
keep their heads down, put meat and potatoes on the table, live a
quiet, hard-working life. But "most Americans" don't run for political
office, head giant corporations, or vote in party caucuses. They're
outside the system until it's too late. There is, already, no way of
making their voices heard.

And this book is daunting because it doesn't only apply to superpower
America but to shrunken-power UK. Much the same diagnosis; much the
same lack of real remedies. Give Ken Clarke's "feral underclass" a
chapter of its own, indeed, and we're in a worse longtime plight than
we even glimpse now, challenged by a future that, frankly, pushes
tinkering over free schools, aircraft carriers or bank restructuring
towards irrelevance. As Friedman and Mandelbaum fundamentally argue,
we haven't begun to wake up yet. There's no full-fledged appreciation
of the mess we're in. So where do we go in search of modest
reassurance, let alone cheer?

Only into a slightly calmer, colder reading room where scarifying dust
jackets don't keep citing Singapore and Finland as
exemplars-cum-humiliators – menacing trailblazers alongside a
ubiquitously invoked China. The city state Lee Kuan Yew built is bent
on survival, not conquering the world. Homogeneous Helsinki is
struggling to rescue Nokia. And modern China itself is a communist
sub-dynasty built of the political straw of discipline and
intimidation. Twenty years ago, Tom Friedman would have been
transfixed by a surging Japan. Now it doesn't get a mention. There's
little for your comfort from this expert, stirring dose of polemic and
dismaying research – except, perversely, a muted reminder that in a
world of proclaimed experts and digital snake oil vendors, we mutts in
the middle have to keep muddling on somehow.
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett