Anchorage Daily News

The dramatic 228-205 vote in the U.S. House against the bailout of America's finance industry this week should be recognized as a clarion call by ordinary citizens announcing their lack of trust of the country's current leadership. What made the vote dramatic was who proposed it: the secretary of the Treasury and the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, supported by President Bush and the Congressional leadership. To these, and a host of media pundits and academic analysts, "the people" gave a fat raspberry. Regardless of what happens subsequently, the electorate's displeasure with leadership that ignores the plight and pleas of ordinary Americans is now loudly manifest. Only a few who voted against the proposal blamed partisanship; most reported that their constituents overwhelmingly opposed it.

The Harvard Center for Public Leadership has been polling confidence in our leaders for some time. Over the last decade the number of respondents who have said there is a leadership crisis in the country has risen from 65 percent to 77 percent. Much more revealing, lack of faith is spread across diverse groups. Business, Congress, the executive branch and the press all fare badly in the poll. Only the military and the medical profession inspire confidence.

Commentators from David Brooks in The New York Times to Paul Waldman of American Prospect have decried the vacuum, writing that the conservative movement in the U.S. is breaking apart on the shoals of inept leadership. President Bush's approvals are at historic lows. His and Vice-President Cheney's insistence that there were ties between Iraq and al-Qaida, and that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, together with the president's ineptitude in the face of Hurricane Katrina, are only symptoms of the problem. Federal spending rose 20 percent during Bush's presidency, during most of which time conservatives controlled Congress. The lie is now given to the constant mantra of deregulation and job creation through supply-side economics. Nor has corruption taken a holiday. Additionally, the number of Americans without health insurance has risen to 43 million. The standard and quality of American living are in steady decline.

Nor do Democrats escape blame. Corporate funding of their political campaigns has paralyzed many Democrats, silencing what should be articulate criticism of the abandonment of the common man. Moreover, their great fear of appearing weak on national security has dampened what should be a vigorous national dialogue on Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive military action and on torture as an interrogation methodology. That palsy has undermined the liberal voice on such issues as the minimum wage, out-sourcing of jobs, and insuring the lower middle class. Thus, rather than leading, their protests have been mainly reactive, following behind the people instead of showing the way.

Sarah Palin's fading popularity, both nationally and in Alaska, is partly a function of this same distrust. Her courage and novelty cannot mask her inadequacies. Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker's scathing indictment in The National Review last week demonstrates the right's realization that America cannot afford pretensions of leadership any longer; what we need now is the real thing.

Comparisons between the current financial crisis and the Great Depression necessarily suggest Franklin Roosevelt. More than one writer has suggested that what Roosevelt provided in an hour of need was more than an expression of confidence. Though it took time to take form, Roosevelt communicated a vision. He and his advisers framed an idea, that American capitalism could be saved, and with it prosperity regenerated, through an extension of Progressive regulation of the economy. One central measure, the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and prohibited bank holding companies from owning other financial companies, acted to constrain the reckless gambling and innovative risk of the sort responsible for much of today's mortgage and credit debacle. Congress repealed much of Glass-Steagall in 1980 and 1999.

The New Deal vision was extensive. As an idea, it was more important than any one of its specific reforms, which included protection of unions, and Social Security. It mandated humility, prudence, and above all, social conscience. To attract voters in November, American politicians must once again act to inspire and engender those values, as part of a new vision for the substantive challenges of our own time.

Steve Haycox is a professor of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

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