Watching the Republican and Democratic conventions from abroad as I am right now lends itself to having a bit of a different experience. I am in London this week meeting some folks about a possible business deal, and as a result have the opportunity to watch our country from someone else’s perspective.
Enlightening, to say the least.
The first thing that is obvious is that we are not alone in having a difficult time trying to figure out how to handle the volatile world economy. The headline here is how the Prime Minister shuffled his cabinet in an effort to boost British fortunes: “Every Ministry is now an economic ministry,” he said. His latest solution is to cut red tape so as to boost the construction sector of the economy.
The news has also covered our conventions extensively, along with Mitt Romney’s missteps at the Olympic games here, and the faded promise of Barack Obama. The general consensus that I got this week from speaking with small business owners and watching the telly is that Romney seems to the Brits to be too rich to be in touch with the average voter, but that, while more likable, Obama has yet to figure out how to kick the American economy into high gear.
It would be hard to argue with either perspective.
(Let me note that because this is a column about entrepreneurship and small business, I try hard to leave politics out of it. That said, increasingly, in the past few years that has been difficult to do. The reason is that so much of what happens on the national stage lately seems to affect Main Street. Obamacare, the Ryan Medicare budget, political paralysis – the whole thing effects how we do business.)
While we obviously have a lot in common with our British cousins, these days we seem to diverge in one very specific, and unfortunate, way: The English remain a far more civil people than we, especially in politics.
Now, that is sort of a funny sentence to write given that right now I am watching the Labor party leader hammer the Prime Minister in their weekly battle in Parliament. And this is not to say that the Brits don’t disagree mightily about how to move forward because certainly they do. But they don’t seem to disagree as disagreeably as we do. They still remain, well, civil.
But our political disagreements are now so intransigent, so mean-spirited, so hyperbolic, so divorced from reality (“We won’t let our convention be dictated by fact checkers,” the Republican spokesman shockingly said) that the days of political stalemate under Clinton and Gingrich seem like the good old days.
And what does any of this have to do with entrepreneurship? Plenty.
Great Britain used to be the world’s superpower and now it is not. Among other reasons for that, it got overextended, and distracted by maintaining its empire. The United States is still the world’s superpower, and we still have important things to do, but boy do we seem distracted.
Indeed, if you want an idea of some of the vital things we should be focused on in these conventions and in this country, other than Mitt Romney’s lack of tax returns or Barack Obama’s place of birth, take a look at what Thomas Friedman has been writing about lately. One goal worthy of a great nation is being the font of entrepreneurship on the planet, and we are uniquely situated to be that font and, in the process, revive our moribund economy.
But we will never get there if we keep squabbling like children.
From abroad it is clear that the United States remains a beacon of hope in the world. But if we want to do serious things, serious people need to act like grown ups. There are deficits to deal with. There is infrastructure to build. There are entitlements that need to be trimmed. There are taxes that need to be raised. Is it really that hard people?
If we want to remain a people who have the ability to do our version of a 21st century moon shot, if we want to remain that beacon of hope, if we want to be that place where entrepreneurship thrives, then we better get our political house in order, pronto.
If we don’t, I fear that we are headed to becoming a country that people will one day describe as “once-great.”
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