Where's the Debate?

When you really break it down the debates and abstract policy proposals, weighing the merit and attempting foresight and clarity with measures to better society.   Everything really come down to the method for communicating information and the people who do it.  Of all the critiques rightfully due the media, and there are many growing more incredible by the phone hacking, the inability to administer a debate is perhaps the most grievous.

The media failure to police debate has a few other inputs.  Allowing politically  rhetoric and bluster to count as a defensible position without properly identifying the cause, effect relationships of policy proposals is perhaps a necessary precursor.  As any sports fan will tell you the best part about any competition are the match ups, picking the debaters.  To allow those of opposing views to most forcefully communicated so that the nation might decide more clearly together how to proceed. 

It is no wonder most of the nation has tuned out policy and fails to vote when the people that might are not welcomed to the arena to make it interesting.  I have been going back to old Chomsky v. Buckley debates on YouTube to try to get a sense for the golden years of televised, modern political debate.  History is written in the shadow of Douglas v. Lincoln or Hamilton v. Jefferson.  Draw focus and attention to choices with long term consequences in the absence of conflict or external threats is  a trying task, apparently not real ratings boosters.

Policy is a record of that debate and the resulting choices we make.  The recent test of policy has left little doubt and the best evidence of the lack of debate.  Mixed with the power of special interest and visible apathy of individuals in America poorly organized to resist and we get failed policy and the continued steady societal decay.  Not coincidentally exactly the outcome that those with money and power only can afford shelter from while the structural institutions that underpin the equality and stability of the nation are lost. 

So while the media portrays the financial crisis as a "Black Swan" it wasn't.  And while attempts to easily mischaracterize this massive sustained crisis as merely a "Great Recession"- something recognizable and easily dispensed with it is not.  But maybe if we listen to people who have made a life trying to make things better for us today on  planet earth, where we live and hope to leave a better place for future generations.  We just might succeed in avoiding future calamities and stake out a better plan.  

People like Jeffrey Sachs.  Wikipedia has done a great job putting a CV together and he has written extensively.  But put his perspective up against the wall and I think you will find a person that deserves-if not a leadership position at the table then at least a voice in the debate. 

That this lecture from the Carnegie Council is 2 years old and still holds its value makes my point best of all.  Available as a podcast in Itunes U under Carnegie Council Public Affairs Program

Jeffrey D. Sachs, March 4, 2009.