A Call to Economic Arms

By Paul Tsongas

Paul and I in 1992

Paul Tsongas should have been the Democratic nominee in 1992, but due to the sleazy and unethical politics of DNC chairman Ron Brown and his chosen candidate it is was not to be. The later likely led to the ethical lapses of the late 90's and the early 21st century in the business world because people are a product of their environment. Paul passed away in 1997. I post the text of this book in the hope that his ideas and legacy can survive and eventually be implemented by a candidate who is thoughtful, compassionate and an agent of change. I hope that day can happen soon so that Paul can smile down on us all!

A Call to Economic Arms: Forging A New American Mandate Paul E. Tsongas Foley, Hoag & Eliot One Post Office Square Boston, MA 02109  Index Introduction................................................. 1 I. Economic Survival - The Creation of National Wealth.......... 4 II. Education - The Meeting House of Our Society................. 26 III. The Environment - Equilibrium With Earth..................... 31 IV. Energy, Fossil Fuels - Someday There Won't Be Any............ 39 V. Foreign Policy - Time to Heal Thyself........................ 49 VI. The Culture of America - The Essential Need.................. 59 VII. Return to Purpose............................................ 72  Introduction America is greatness. It is the pursuit of excellence and the fulfillment of human capacity. America is not the casual acceptance of economic decline and social disintegration. Yet, that is what some are prepared to endure. We are better than what we are being asked to be by our leaders. We are a nation of goals, not a nation of limits. We must have leadership that is committed to world pre-eminence in the strength of our economy, in the cohesion of our society, and in the quality of our environment. To accept anything less is to do violence to the two centuries of our history. America is not just another country. It is not just another place. It is the embrace of fundamental human values that define what man can become. America is "We The People" as respectful keepers of the sacred trust that was forged by the blood and hardships of those who came before us. America has been bequeathed to us. It is a living heritage meant for us to preserve and then bequeath to other Americans, yet unborn and yet proven to be worthy. Today, that heritage is under attack. Its restoration is the great challenge of our generation. This is the mandate to which we must now attend. America faces great economic peril as our standard of living is threatened by Europe 1992 and the Pacific Rim. Once the world's greatest economic power, we are selling off our national patrimony as we sink ever deeper into national debt. The Reagan-Bush years have seen us become the world's greatest debtor nation. America is also witnessing the weakening of its social fabric as more and more families dissolve under the onslaught of a culture that glorifies the immediate and the shallow. As our historic values are disregarded by today's society-in-a-hurry, the civility of America has been lessened. Finally, America is adrift as our leaders flinch from the difficult decisions that will safeguard us from the energy and environmental threats that confront us. This nation's will is not being called upon on the home front because of a fear that our people are not ready for an honest and forceful response to these threats. I strongly disagree. The purposeful avoidance of difficult issues caused serious erosion to our society in the eighties. The eighties, fortunately, are over. The icon of indulgence that we worshipped during that decade has proven to be a false god. However, it has left behind a legacy of comfort and ease and the pursuit of self. That legacy is not what America is all about. That legacy contravenes the values of our ancestors. These forebearers created a nation with an enduring work ethic, a sense of personal discipline, and an acute appreciation of the common good. They had a sense of purpose that gave meaning to their lives and strengthened their nation. They defined patriotism as what they did, not what they avoided doing. They left that sense of purpose and that patriotism to our keeping. We have set it aside.  Page 2 America is asking us to return to that purpose. The time has come for a New American Mandate, based on the precious values of the past but focused on a vision of the future. The New American Mandate is a positive response to America under siege. Saddam Hussein is an acknowledged threat, but he is not the only one. Just as we deploy our men and women in the Persian Gulf, we must deploy every American to stop our economic bleeding, to restore our social fabric, and to meet head on the environmental and energy threats to our well being. We must all be soldiers - everyone of us. Our men and women in the armed forces demonstrate their love of country by facing possible death in the sands of the Arabian peninsula. We must be prepared to love our country as well in our every day deeds and our every day commitments. America in 1991 needs our total devotion. This paper is meant to provide the battle plan to deploy that devotion in a way that will strengthen the nation we love. The 1992 Democratic Mission The mission of the Democratic Party in 1992 would normally be to put one of its own in the White House. But these are not normal times. What our country needs is not just a President - but a President with the necessary mandate. In many respects the mandate to correctly change our course is more critical than which party will oversee that change from the White House. One thing is clear. Democrats must avoid, at all costs, emulating the "Pledge of Allegiance/Willie Horton/Read My Lips" campaign of George Bush. That campaign was designed to win in November, not govern in January. There was no attempt to seek a mandate except, of course, the one on taxes which everyone knew was a cynical ruse. The rest was all hot button politics. It was philosophy by polling data. So George Bush rules, and the nation is without a sense of direction. His media consultants patted themselves on the back, pleased with a victory that would enhance their professional reputations. Having had no interest in creating a prevailing wind, the White House now acts as a spinning weathervane. The Persian Gulf is addressed but all else remains set aside. The country looks for some sign of the "vision thing," but to no avail. We Democrats, of course, could do the same thing. Winning would be thrilling as all victories are. But on January 20th the issues would be no less real. Perhaps our Democrat could be fortunate like Ronald Reagan and escape before the consequences of his policies were fully realized. But if that is our offering, why would the American people substitute one army of "feel-good" salesmen for another?  Page 3 Let us use 1992 to articulate the cold challenges and the real threats to America that came before Saddam Hussein and will remain after Saddam Hussein. Let us seek to rally our nation to forcefully address these issues. Let us create a mandate, a mandate that will allow purposeful and effective governance. Without such a mandate, the White House will be a prison. And the President will be captive to economic and social forces he cannot control. With a mandate, the fortunes of America will truly brighten because the people will be deployed with purpose. This is the New American Mandate we must create. It requires the re-emergence of America as the world's pre-eminent economic power. It calls upon America to lead the fight for world environmental equilibrium. It demands that, once and for all, we achieve energy sufficiency. It seeks the repairing of the American social fabric so that we are spiritually one community. It positions America as the critical partner in achieving world peace but based upon the principles of true burden sharing. If we Democrats cause that to happen, we will have truly served our country, no matter who wins the election. The White House and a mandate. Both or neither. Let's get on with it. This paper will address six of the issues around which the strength of our nation revolves. They are: * Economic Survival * Education * Environment * Energy * Foreign Policy * Our Cultural Fabric My views reflect my ten years on Capitol Hill, my observations these past six years in the private sector, and my earlier experiences living outside the United States.  Page 4 I. Economic Survival: The Creation of National Wealth There is no reason why the United States should not be the pre-eminent economic power on earth. No reason whatsoever. We have the land, the resources and the people. What we lack is the leadership. Our political leadership has chosen to ignore difficult economic realities. It has, instead, decided to finance short-term avoidance by placing the nation under crushing and unsustainable debt. As a result, America is facing great economic peril. We are daily witnessing this ever-mounting national debt, the inexorable sale of America to foreign interests, and the steady deterioration of our capacity to compete in the global marketplace. Yet, the alarm remains unsounded. Washington is recession proof. The rest of the country, however, is not. Washington talk about "it's morning in America" rings hollow in communities devastated by failing industries. To them it's high noon. Bravado talk about "we can out-compete, out-produce and out-sell" any country in the world without change in our national economic policies is a self-serving delusion. Washington politicians should experience service on corporate boards of companies that are trying to compete internationally. They should have their financial survival riding on a startup business struggling under the burden of the high costs of American capital. They should have close relatives seeking to manage companies under the quarterly gaze of Wall Street vultures and getting battered by foreign companies whose investors think in terms of years. They should watch a son or daughter sell off technological genius to the Japanese or Germans or Swiss because no American company is interested. This is what is happening outside the Beltway. America's manufacturing base is under attack and Washington treats it as just another issue. It is not just another issue. It is the issue. This problem is our collective kryptonite. An ever less competitive manufacturing base inevitably means cataclysmic erosion of our standard of living. If we are reduced to just flipping hamburgers and exploiting our raw materials, we will have an economy, but it will be a diminished economy of decline and defeat. The American people would never stand for such a prospect. As the recent MIT report on competitiveness put it, "In order to live well, a country must produce well." This is the slogan which should sit on the President's desk. It would perhaps be useful to put numbers on this concern. There are three major indices that tell the tale - the number of persons employed in manufacturing, our balance of trade and the federal budget deficit. Manufacturing employment: The United States today has only 17% of its total workforce in manufacturing, down from 26% in 1970. If defense industries are removed, we have only 15%. The Germans have 33% of their companies in manufacturing and the Japanese have 28%.  Page 5 During the 1970's, the United States paid its production workers the highest wages in the world and still maintained a positive balance of trade. Today, nine other nations pay higher wages, yet our trade balance is chronically negative. Over the past five years, our average trade balance has been $133 billion negative while the Germans have averaged $61 billion positive. Yet, the Germany average production wage and benefits is $18.02 per hour compared with $13.92 in the United States. Overall productivity in this country grew at over 3% per year from 1960 to 1973 but has risen by only 1% per year since then. The average weekly earnings of the private nonagricultural workforce grew (in 1984 dollars) from $262 in 1949 to $336 in 1959 to $387 in 1969. Since then, it has declined to $376 in 179 and $335 in 1989. Balance of Trade: Hard as it may be to believe, the United States used to be a net exporter. In 1960 we had a net balance of trade surplus of $2.8 billion. In 1970 it was a surplus of $2.3 billion. In 1980 it stood at a surplus of $1.1 billion. The 1980's have seen deficits steadily grow. In 1990 our trade deficit totalled over $95 billion. This deficit accumulation totals some $910 billion since 1980. What does this mean? It means that $910 billion of our wealth has been transferred to someone else - either by resources leaving this country or by foreigners buying up America. At the current rate we will either be in total hock to the outside world or the outside world will own us. In contrast, the same timeframe saw Japan net a balance of trade surplus of $57 billion in 1989. (And this despite the fact that it is far more dependent on imported oil than we are.) Germany enjoyed a surplus in 1989 of $55 billion. These two countries lost World War II but they are the clear victors in the global economic wars of the present day. Again, this massive bleeding of America's economic base should galvanize a fierce collective response with Washington in the lead. Check your local newspapers to see when it was last mentioned and on which page it was printed. This is avoidance politics at its most destructive. Federal budget deficit: Someday, teachers of political history will relate the rhetoric and reality of the Reagan-Bush economic era. They will talk of two Republican conservatives who successfully bashed Democrats as wild spenders. They will speak of these two leaders adamantly calling for a Constitutional Amendment to force a balanced federal budget. They will recall the constant rhetoric of the need for the federal government to match expenditures with incomes "like every American household." The students will readily understand the sheer power of this political approach. Then the teacher will provide numbers.  Page 6 All forty presidents before Reagan ran up a combined national debt of $994.3 billion. Reagan-Bush alone added another $2,623.5 billion. The much criticized Jimmy Carter ran an average budget deficit of $57 billion. George Bush has averaged $245 billion. George Bush in the FY 1990 budget alone ran a deficit greater than the deficits of Democratic Presidents Carter, Johnson, Kennedy and Truman combined. The students will not believe the teacher. How could this be, they will ask? How could Reagan and Bush have gotten away with balanced-budget rhetoric at a time of massive budget deficit realities? How could they lull the American people into accepting such staggering debt without widespread revolt? More pointedly, they will ask, why did people allow this enormous accumulation of debt which now burdens their generation? This, of course, raises the pointed question of generational morality. In FY 1991 the interest on the federal debt is $197 billion. By the year 2000, it is expected to reach 25% of the entire federal budget. This reality is morally reprehensible. It is the record of the Reagan-Bush years. The Democratic response must, above all, seek to reestablish our manufacturing capability at, or above, that of the Japanese. The Republicans, of course, have carefully avoided the articulation of any goals whatsoever. Some of them argue that the decline in our manufacturing base is acceptable because it will be replaced by a service-based economy. This is the avoidance politicians' drug of choice. There is no such thing as being a major financial center in the world without a vibrant competitive manufacturing sector. Again, numbers tell the story. The largest American bank is Citicorp. In 1970 it ranked 2nd worldwide. Chase Manhattan Bank was ranked 3rd. In 1980 they ranked 5th and 11th, respectively. Today, they rank 24th and 54th. Sixteen Japanese banks rank ahead of our biggest. In major financial transactions we are, in effect, dropping from the radar screen. It is no accident that the world's six largest banks are now Japanese. The Germans and French also have major banking entities and they are resolute in emphasizing manufacturing. A nation without a manufacturing base is a nation heading toward third world status. So much for morning in America. This economic silent spring is a disgrace. Yet, no word of alarm escapes from George Bush. "Read my lips, add more debt." Our forefathers labored mightily to establish America as the pre-eminent economic power on earth. We have allowed the fruits of their labors to be sold off to foreign buyers, one national treasure after another. We accept enormous trade deficits month after month, year after year, with hardly a murmur. We treat the staggering federal deficits as inevitable results of political gridlock. It's time we faced up to our peril.  Page 7 This is where democracies rely upon the courage of their elected leaders. The normal political instinct is to always engage in happy talk. It is courage which allows a politician to take a people beyond that. It takes toughness to lead a people toward their preservation no matter how disquieting the journey may be. For avoidance of unpleasant reality is simply part of human nature. I learned that lesson once more in the aftermath of my cancer diagnosis in 1983. I found myself wishing for soothing reassurance, but what I needed was tough love. Not feeling ill, I wanted to just go home and live a normal life and not deal with the disease until I absolutely had to. For a while that's what I did. And it was possible to push away the awareness of the realities inside of me. By 1985, however, I was put on mild oral chemotherapy. This was done in hopes of avoiding the more toxic intravenous drugs. And I knew that after that would come radiation. And after that, perhaps, would come the still experimental bone marrow transplant. I even put myself on a macrobiotic diet in search of an effortless deliverance. My doctor was not impressed. When the time came for my late fall checkup my doctor was shocked at my deteriorated condition and upset with me for not seeking him out earlier than my scheduled appointment. The disease was voluminous in my body and was about to consume me. The next ten months contained no happy talk. Monthly sessions of intravenous chemotherapy were followed by target radiation. In late August, I was undergoing the bone marrow transplant with its massive chemotherapy and whole body radiation. For the next six weeks I was confined to a sterile hospital room, attempting to recover from these assaults to my body. These were weeks of fear and discomfort, of course, but they were also weeks of slowly realizing that I was now able to look at the monster full face. In early October I was released from that room. I was back to work by mid-November, thin as a rail, bald as a billiard ball and wonderous of my survival. I have often reflected back upon those ten months. I know that my hard-nosed, no-margin-for-error doctors saved my life. But I also know that I resented their tough approach during that period. My story is my own but there are millions of Americans who have had to learn the same lesson in countless other personal crises. Avoidance of hard truths makes the inevitable dealing with them all the more difficult. And what is true for individuals is also true for nations. In 1991 there is a need for us to acknowledge that we must get our financial house in order. The New American Mandate is, above all, an economic imperative. It is committing ourselves to the actions necessary to achieve full economic recovery and unassailable competitive strength. This involves what we do every day in the workplace and every day in the marketplace. It is thinking about these daily events as expressions of economic patriotism - as necessary prerequisites for the preservation of our standard of living.  Page 8 Through the New American Mandate we will demand that our leaders articulate the policies for this economic regeneration. Not just the comfortable policies, but the difficult ones as well. Not at some distant time when it will be politically easier, but now, while we still have the capacity to control our destiny. We need a national economic policy. What we have today is a naive faith that our companies can compete without any public sector help as they struggle against foreign companies linked to governments with resolute industrial policies. Our companies are going forth to do one-on-one battle and are being mugged. Their competitors are aided by governments that aggressively seek out the advantages of uneven playing fields whenever possible. The Reagan-Bush response to all this has been benign neglect on a global basis. And the muggings continued unabated. We Democrats must do better. We must level the playing field. There are many components to a national economic policy. Let me list a few. Democratic and Republican Shibboleths Both political parties are going to have to abandon the rusty core elements of their economic philosophies and head off in new directions. These archaic old saws are much embraced by party chieftains. The affection for them expressed by party ideologues is matched only by our trading competitors' fervent hope that they will never disappear. These nations benefit by our politics of self-delusion. Democrats Democrats have always believed that their essential mission is social and economic justice. And so it is. Look for such advancements in the twentieth century and in almost every instance a Democrat's hand has been at work. It is a noble tradition. That tradition must never be abandoned. Underlying that mission, however, has been a rarely acknowledged but enduring notion. Wealth would be created by others and after its creation we Democrats would intervene to preserve fairness by the equitable redistribution of that wealth. During most of this century that may have been a logical battle plan. Not so any more. There is today one glaring truth. You cannot redistribute wealth that is never created. A party devoted to the purpose of carving up the economic pie should be alarmed by the reality that the pie is shrinking. Witness the devastation being visited upon critical social programs by the shortfall in tax revenues in most states in the country. Democrats are going to have to go back to the original act - the creation of national wealth. They are going to have to sit down with the business community and jointly establish policies of wealth  Page 9 creation. It means giving up comfortable political nuclear weapons - such as the marvelous boost gained from routinely attacking corporate America and big business. Some recent Democratic rhetoric presents itself as traditional populism, an "us-them" view of the world where the "them" is anyone in the manufacturing, service or banking industries. Wake up, Democrats. Without viable manufacturing, service and banking sectors, there is no country. A marriage - note the word is marriage, not liaison - with corporate America is essential. Corporate America must survive, indeed thrive, if our Democratic social agenda is to have any hope of implementation. This does not mean that we put aside our concern about social and economic justice. That standard must remain in the forefront of our consciousness. But it must coexist with a resolute determination that America must create wealth in order to provide a decent standard of living for our people. To effectively deal with the problems of homelessness, of AIDS, of affordable housing, of catastrophic health care for everyone, of college scholarships, of all the human needs we care about there must be revenue flow from which to secure the necessary funds. The more we want to solve the great human injustices in our society, the more we are going to need a full throttle economic engine. One cannot exist without the other. Pro-business, some would call it. And so it is. Aggressively so. But commonwealth is what it is as well. There is a real political opening here for our party. Many in the business community are quite alarmed by the economic decline of America and want to fight back. They see an administration that has always devoted its energies elsewhere and offers no real hope that its disinterest will ever end. These business leaders, however, view the Democrats with deep skepticism. They do truly see us as "tax and spend" advocates who are instinctively hostile to business interests. Our task is to convince them that we really understand one simple reality. America's standard of living is totally dependent upon their capacity to compete and be profitable. It's about time we said so and acted accordingly. To me this is not an abstraction. My childhood was spent experiencing the economic decline of my home city, Lowell, Massachusetts. My father (a Republican) owned a dry cleaners and the entire family worked in the business. My father worked from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., six days a week, 51 weeks a year. Sundays were spent doing the books and repairing the machinery. By any fair standard, this staggering workload should have resulted in just rewards for him. It didn't. No matter how hard he worked, no matter how conscientious he was, the forces of Lowell's economic decline were too much to overcome. The remembrance of those days has left me with an inability to view economic dislocation casually. Perhaps I have too good a memory. But when I see our nation's economic indices, I have a foreboding sense of not wanting these trends to run their course. I want to determine my own fate. I believe the business world is full of people who share this deep concern. We Democrats must reach out to them.  Page 10 Republicans Whereas the Democrats must learn to embrace the world of industrialists, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, Republicans are going to have to alter their views as well. At the Republican core is the almost religious belief that an unfettered free market is the best of all worlds. Industrial policy is seen as equivalent to child pornography. It is seen as the domain of such reprobates as Castro, the Sandinistas and the now discredited Communist planners. This view is unschooled. Industrial policies presuppose a market system. They show how to improve the competitiveness of private firms through public policies. Since Communist central planning systems have neither markets nor private companies, it is by definition a contradiction in terms to refer to them as having industrial policies. Republicans are going to have to refine their perspectives to realize that to embrace any component of an industrial policy is not to immediately be guilty of Soviet-style central planning activities. Industrial policy is what Japan has. It is what Germany has. It is what we must have as well. When I was involved with the Chrysler bill some eleven years ago, the attitude of the purist laissez faire proponents was, basically, "let it die." To argue the case for sustaining a company with a viable future product line was difficult because some felt it was government intervention. And it was. But if the company had gone under would America have been better off? Of course not. The government even made money on the deal when it was all over. But I never heard anyone say that they would have voted differently. An America with just two major auto manufacturers is not an industrial policy. Saving Chrysler was industrial policy. It worked and we should not be so quick to forget that fact. Republicans are well trained to look at potential military adversaries and demand weapon equivalence in defense of the nation. If these adversaries have a particular military capability, then by definition, we must put aside all other considerations to make our military capability even bigger and better. Today our economic enemies are our political friends. The war they wage is in the marketplace, not on the battlefield. America can be done away with by economic decay just as assuredly as by foreign invasion. The implosion of the Warsaw Pact was economic, political and social. It collapsed from its own internal weaknesses, not by the force of outside military attack. An ever diminishing standard of living in the United States will cause us to battle each other over diminishing resources. We will cease to be a major factor in world affairs as we focus only upon our downward spiral. For the Republicans as well there should be one glaring truth. American companies need the United States government as a full partner if they are to have any hope of competing internationally. That means  Page 11 an industrial policy. Take a deep breath, my Republican friends. It's a brave new world out there. Adam Smith was a marvelous man but he wouldn't know a superconductor or memory chip if he tripped over one. Take another deep breath. The threat to America today is not only a diminished Soviet Union. It is not just Saddam Hussein. It is the threat of a different dimension. It is Japanese, German, Taiwanese, Swiss, French, South Korean, etc. Friends all. But just as capable of reducing us to impotence. They have already begun. The adrenalin that Republicans would call up at will to confront Soviets or Cubans or Sandinistas or East Germans or North Koreans or the Iraqi Republican Guard must be called up to confront our friends. This is war by another playwright. But it's still war. It doesn't take a genius to understand the post-Gulf War era. The Japanese and Germans will have emerged as even more formidable economic competitors. They chose to bypass the conflict while we made it our foremost national purpose. It is no accident that CNN and network coverage of the war was viewed by Americans on Japanese TV sets and was interspersed with ads from Japanese manufactured products. Republicans must acknowledge this and begin to mobilize accordingly. This means opening up to aggressive and resolute policies which will put the government in the foxhole with our beleaguered American companies. Republicans who focus on "defense strength" must be made to understand that such capabilities come from government funds. Government funds come from taxes. And taxes come from a vibrant economy. Kill the economy and you have no "defense strength." If the New American Mandate requires Democrats to embrace the creation of wealth, it also requires Republicans to see honor in asking the question "what works" and to see dishonor in slavish adherence to past economic dogma. For Democrats the political opportunity lies in the likelihood that George Bush will not act any differently about this than Ronald Reagan did. There are three reasons for this. First, the politics are an impediment. Avoidance politics have always been, and will always be, powerfully seductive. "Read my lips, no new taxes" was just the latest in a long line of homage to false gods. The Reagan-Bush line has been to gloss over the dangers ("morning in America") and simply ignore fundamental economic trends. Their concern is the immediate judgment of their electoral contemporaries not the judgment of historians - even if that history is rapidly coming upon us. It is my contention that the accumulation of hard data as to our economic dilemma has provided a base for electoral realism in 1992. That base can only expand. The 1992 Democratic campaign must take it on faith that Americans are prepared to wage this economic battle ferociously. The Republicans will presume the opposite and will continue their avoidance politics. Second, there is no sense of urgency. Most of the key economic decision makers in the administration come from circumstances of affluence. For them there will be financial insulation no matter what  Page 12 happens. Their economic safety nets are made of steel cables. There is no foreboding. There is no perception that the economic ground beneath them can tremble. It is just too removed from their own personal histories and circumstances. This is not meant to suggest venality. It is meant to suggest that perception of a particular threat is more acute in those who have faced it before. Third, the trade deficit, the budget deficits and manufacturing employment numbers listed above are all Reagan-Bush. They occurred during their watch. They are the party of record. To reverse course would be to acknowledge that their unaided free market policies have been dysfunctional as we confront trade competitors who have their public and private sectors in resolute harmony. To reverse course is to admit error. It will never happen. At best they will work around the margins. A full blown frontal assault on the economic threat would require a self-analysis of the past eleven years that will inevitably sully the Reagan-Bush record. George Bush cannot, and will not, do this. His course was set more than a decade ago when he retreated from his declaration that Reagan's policies were "voodoo economics." Once he capitulated to that Republican realpolitik, his options were narrowed forever. We Democrats must insure that George Bush's dilemma is not America's dilemma. Recognize the Peril This is step one. This is where America and George Bush must part company. No one ever solved a problem he refused to acknowledge. Yes, we are losing ground, particularly in high technology, basic manufacturing, and financial services. Yes, it is the national crisis of the highest priority. Yes, it threatens to seriously reduce the American standard of living. Yes, it will destroy the economic foundation of our military national security. Yes, it will severely compromise our capability to play a peacekeeping role in world affairs. Yes, we now believe that government must be an active partner in this great challenge. Yes, America should be the pre-eminent manufacturing nation on earth again. Yes, Americans are the equal of any workforce in the world. Good. Now let's get on with it.  Page 13 Be Prepared to Make Strategic Investments The notion of investing in the technologies necessary to create the Star Wars program was hotly debated. But it became national policy and billions were allocated to that purpose. Why? National security. What about investments in technologies that could impact our economic national security? Horrors. That's central planning. In the long run would America be better off with hundreds of billions invested in an improbable Star Wars system arrayed only against an imploding Soviet Union or by developing an insurmountable lead in ceramic engines, supercomputers and memory chips? Indeed, without a thriving manufacturing capability in these industries the economic base to fund military research can not exist. Many anti-industrial policy Republicans would say that the non-functionality of Star Wars against the Soviet Union is an unfortunate but necessary price of eternal vigilance against a foreign military threat. These people would also argue against major governmental investments in strategic technologies because, unlike the Japanese, "we can't pick winners and losers." What about the economic foreign threat? Again, it's a matter of mindset. Washington has been focused on the Soviet challenge for the entire adult years of most of its leaders. It rebels at the notion that in the 1990's there are real dangers that do not emanate from missiles or tanks or fighter aircraft. It must rethink threat. Threat can be venal such as a Saddam Hussein. But threat can come from people who are friendly and have no evil intent. The threat to America is economic as well. We must think of government and industry as partners with the same level of enthusiasm, indeed patriotism, that the military-industrial complex generates for its joint mission. Strategic investments in emerging technologies is part of an industrial policy which will result in some losers, yes, but will also result in some critical winners as well. These winners will be a major part of our economic future. Particularly now that American venture capital has shrunk dramatically, government has a contributing role to play in insuring that our push for technological competitiveness has a fair chance at success. Promotion of Science and Research This is one area where the rhetoric is in place but not the reality. The National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, NASA, the Departments of Energy and Agriculture among others, are the mothers' milk of cutting edge research investigations. We should not be satisfied with marginal increases in these budgets. Again, its a matter of mindset. The Manhattan Project. The Apollo program. The war in the Persian Gulf. It's just a matter of recognizing the threat and responding to it. There will be no manufacturing sector without a powerful basic and applied research capability. Put these agencies at the top of our funding priorities.  Page 14 In addition to the traditional areas of basic and applied research, we must devote more attention to applied engineering and manufacturing engineering. The economic war that we are losing is centered on process technologies. The taking of new ideas, indeed, even old ideas, and converting them to manufactured goods is the great trade battle ground. The winners here are those who can take high and low tech products and simply manufacture them better. It is the process of manufacturing that should also be the recipient of research monies since it is only the production of a technology which creates wealth. The initial discovery and development of a product are the stuff of Nobel Prizes and prideful articles in trade journals. But that is not enough. The prior definition of success embraced those who could conceive new product ideas. Today the definition of success embraces those who can take those ideas, wherever they may originate, and turn them into products quickly, efficiently, and with great quality control. The Japanese takeover of the American-originated VCR market is an obvious example. These are the cash cows. These are the providers of employment for a nation's people. They are equally worthy of intellectual inquiry and investigation. The need here is to exalt science in all its dimensions. There must be a White House effort to create an environment wherein young Americans choose science (and engineering) as a career. The society as a whole needs to acknowledge that we will survive as a viable economy only by the fruits of the minds of young American scientists. To have our best and brightest heading to law schools and Wall Street is a gross misallocation of resources. The best and the brightest should be in the laboratories and in the production facilities. The best and the brightest should be deployed to reinvigorate our manufacturing sector. This will require a sea change away from the values of the 1980's that drove our young away from occupations of production and into the occupations of the paper chase. A society which pays its 29 year old science researchers $25,000 a year and its 29 year old lawyers $100,000 a year and its 29 year old investment bankers $200,000 a year and its 29 year old left fielders $2 million a year is sending all the wrong messages. It is a formula for unrelenting decline. The young American scientist must be recognized as the fuel of any viable economic engine. Change Anti-Trust Laws Current anti-trust laws prevent American companies from joint venturing in almost any area including such critical ones as research and development. The rationale for this policy is rooted in America of years past, long before our companies faced foreign corporate behemoths. We need to pool our resources to be equal with our competition. We have to allow our companies to muscle up. Joint venturing is the sine qua non of that capability. It must become an everyday occurrence in order to equip these companies to compete in the global marketplace.  Page 15 American companies should be released from anti-trust constraints in areas which impact on their capabilities in international trade. This is one area where our Japanese and German competitors view us with great mirth. To them the concept of group strategies is an obvious way of maximizing your strengths. Seeing America hobbled by her own hand must seem to be a heaven- sent advantage. Current American law pays homage to a period when all the producers were American and thus cooperation between them was clearly dangerous to the consuming public. Today most of the producers are foreign and they threaten to eradicate American producers. There must be a serious rethinking. The fact that our anti-trust laws were not changed years ago speaks to the absolute neglect of the cutting edge issues of competitiveness while we engage endlessly in the rhetoric of promoting competitiveness. Democrats are particularly vulnerable to this criticism. We must give our companies a more level playing field through policy changes that don't require massive federal expenditures. Increase Our Savings Rate Congress should pass laws which encourage savings over consumption. This will create a capital pool which will begin to match the resource base that countries with high savings rates enjoy. The lack of a capital pool is the economic equivalent of unilateral disarmament. The numbers here are staggering. Compare the United States, Japan and Germany in years 1980, 1984 and 1988. Our national savings as a percentage of GNP went from 18.8 to 17.0 to 15.1. Germany had rates of 21.7 to 21.7 to 24.5. Japan, of course, was in a class by itself. It had rates of 31.1 to 30.7 to 33.3. We need a dramatic improvement in our rate of savings in order to provide the much needed capital base for investment. A much greater abundance of capital will serve two purposes. First, it will reduce the cost of capital to U.S. companies. Currently the cost of capital in America far exceeds that of Japan and Germany. It renders corporate decision makers unable to make investments whose payout is long term. This financial barrier is lethal to the kinds of corporate strategies that are necessary in order to compete. Second, it will reduce our current hazardous dependence on outside sources of capital. These are sources which can quickly evaporate when these nations decide they have other more pressing uses for these funds: i.e. West Germany's current interest in investing in the restoration of former East Germany. Being dependent on foreign capital is not unlike being dependent on foreign oil. You don't control your own destiny. Various I.R.A.s for retirement, college expenses, home ownership are examples of pro-savings incentives. Other ideas should be aggressively explored.  Page 16 Finally, the savings ethic must be fully ingrained in the American culture forever, not just to get us through this difficult period. That means our children must be part of it. Schools should work with banks to give each child a savings account or some equivalent. No matter how small, such accounts establish a thought process. Efforts should be made to allow the pooling of funds into Childrens Mutual Funds, wherein school groups could invest minor amounts of money at reduced service fees. This would have the additional benefit of directly involving children in learning about and caring about the American economic system. These would be latter day Economic Liberty Bonds. Young people would be taking a personal step in helping to provide the capital necessary in America's battle for economic survival. The secondary value of such participation by the young is the early awareness of how dependent America is upon the actions of individuals. Hopefully, this sense of personal relevance will be reinforced by other actions and lead to a more contributory attitude towards citizenship. Our people must perceive America's economic vulnerability and see their own essential role in safeguarding their nation. Investment Over Consumption There are a lot of indices that show the inevitable decline of American economic fortunes compared to those of the Japanese and Germans. Inevitable, that is, if these numbers are not changed. Probably the most significant are the numbers which reflect the differences in mindset relative to investment and consumption. Consumption is today. Investment is tomorrow. It is seed corn consumed versus seed corn planted. Nothing is more basic. Yet relative to our competitors, we are devoted to consumption, and they are devoted to investment. Again raw numbers. The investment rates of the United States, Japan and Germany. Public and private. Years 1970, 1980 and 1988. 1970 1980 1988 ---- ---- ---- United States: public 15.1 15.6 15.5 private 2.5 1.8 1.6 Germany: public 20.9 19.1 17.5 private 4.6 3.6 2.4 Japan: public 31.0 25.5 25.3 private 4.5 6.1 5.2 The reasons for this are historical. Japan and Germany were ravaged during World War II. Their leadership and their populations had known the horrors of economic disequilibrium - from runaway inflation to  Page 17 personal deprivation. Out of this adversity came the intense Post-War determination to create patterns of economic behavior that value future stability and security over present day consumption. We saw the Post-War period as the time to reap the fruits of our victory. Present day consumption was seen as an earned reward eclipsing any widespread sense of providing for the future. The 1980's were the epitome of that mindset. It was assumed the future would always be economically secure. That assumption was wrong. The result of these national patterns if allowed to persist will be a much lesser America. Fewer good jobs. More foreign ownership. More social dislocation. Less world influence. More crushing debt, both personal and national. The savers will dominate the spenders. The investors will eclipse the consumers. The lean and hungry will always prevail over the comfortable and complacent. The problem here is not that all of this is not understood. The problem is that being understood by economists is one thing. Being understood by politicians is quite another. And transforming understanding into action is more difficult still. The economists will say that investment and consumption are like a seesaw. In order for investment to go up, consumption must come down. Herein lies the political dilemma. But herein also lies the opportunity for political leadership. Through the New American Mandate, our people will affirm their commitment to a policy that defines the common good as the promotion of investment over consumption. We need to create in ourselves the kind of steely will to survive economically that our Japanese and German counterparts still have. We must fashion a political environment wherein a drumbeat for necessary economic policies allows our elected officials to do what is right without fear of immediate ouster. Voting for needed economic reform must be demanded by the electorate. Continued avoidance of such reform must be clearly identified as unacceptable pandering by politicians who are putting their own re-election concerns above the national interest. This involves choices, few of which will be easy. Yet relative to the economic decisions being faced by countries like Poland and the Soviet Union they are far less onerous. Far less. It means looking at the entitlement programs, heretofore a political never-never land in American politics. Would the Congress support a policy of reducing the yearly increase in entitlements by one percent below the cost of living? It's not a great deal but it would establish a policy of economic response. But politically it will not pass, even for those above a certain income level, in the absence of a clear understanding as to the nation's need for such a measure. It must be seen as patriotic to rally all of us to this cause. The principle of shared sacrifice for the common good must be advanced. This is the "vision thing" that George Bush finds so hard to come to grips with. The policy must be made clear to every American. We must make the transition from a high consumption/low investment country to a lesser consumption/high investment country. Japan and Germany did so decades ago because adversity gave them no choice. Can America do the same without having experienced such deprivation? Can we act in time to lessen the impact of far more painful decisions in the future?  Page 18 I believe we can if the political leadership is prepared to show the way. Reduce the capital gains tax for investments in appropriate securities held for a long period of time The current capital gains tax debate would only happen in a political environment far removed from the pressures faced by American companies. We don't need an across the board capital gains reduction as President Bush fought so desperately for last year. Encouraging people to invest in raw land or commercial buildings or art collections adds nothing to our competitiveness. They are simply less critical recipients of our capital. Providing capital gains advantages to people who speculate in the stock market is equally counterproductive since it rewards short-term corporate horizons at the expense of long-term corporate strategies. It also encourages our most talented to seek their fortunes by speculative and manipulative paper shuffling as opposed to production oriented careers. Michael Milken at $500 million a year is very powerful career counseling of the worse kind. We need to limit capital gains incentives to long-term investments in corporate America. This signals that such investments are our nation's top investment priority. To be effective, this signal cannot be rhetoric, but must be pure marketplace. Invest here and your returns will be maximized. Very simple. Invest in an American company, hold that stock rather than speculate with it, and you get a significantly lower capital gains tax rate. The longer the stock is held, the lower the tax rate. In addition, efforts should be made to define new enterprises. While the focus of the capital gains tax differential must be on corporate investments, it makes obvious sense to give an added incentive to such new enterprises. The growth of the American industrial base has always come from small and emerging businesses. These are the entrepreneurs with the greatest maneuverability. But they also have the greatest vulnerabilty. Today with the shrinking of the venture capital markets they are at even greater risk. There should be differentials here large enough to attract serious investment into those new ventures which will provide sources of fresh employment in the years ahead. It is time for paying attention to sunrise enterprises as well as sunset enterprises. It is this combination of criteria that should make the capital gains reduction a central part of creating an America in economic rebound. Such a program would channel capital towards our industrial/manufacturing sector and would stretch out the time horizons of investors. The obstacle here is party politics. Some Democrats oppose any capital gains differential because supporting it prevents them from using the "class warfare" argument against the Republicans. Taking aggressive anti-business positions is second nature to them. Class warfare is certainly good politics. But it's good politics at the expense of the nation's industrial base. Democrats should be concerned with what a targeted capital gains tax would do for America and not be focused on a myopic discourse about who benefits the most under such a system. It is the common good that counts.  Page 19 I learned this lesson in 1975 in Lowell. My home city was being crushed under double digit unemployment. The downtown was a visually unattractive array of buildings that had not seen any reinvestment for decades. Lowell was everyone's model of a depressed mill city. As a new Congressman I proposed the creation of the Lowell Financial and Development Corporation. This entity would be funded by the local banks contributing one-twentieth of one percent of their assets to it. The corporation would then reinvest those funds in restoring the historic buildings of the downtown. There was the expected resistance from some of the bankers but eventually they agreed because they, in essence, owned this devaluating property. What was not expected was the feeling by a few non-business people that the corporation was inappropriate because it would benefit some building owners that they considered unsavory. These people don't deserve to receive financial rewards, they argued, because they are responsible for letting these buildings fall into disarray in the first place. I must admit that I felt some sympathy for this righteousness but not enough to change my mind. The corporation was created, and it and its organizational twin, the Lowell Plan, have been very successful. Lowell has become a national model of urban renaissance. Did the "unsavory" people benefit? They sure did. But so did everyone else in a once-depressed mill city with what had seemed a marginal future. So what. Provide for a Research & Development Tax Credit This should be self-explanatory. We can't compete long term if we are not putting our earnings back into research and development. Such reinvestment back into a company should be viewed as the corporate investment of highest priority and taxed accordingly. Farmers who consume their seed corn are never heard from again. The same is true of companies. We have to help American companies strengthen their prospects for the long term. Change the counterproductive short term U.S. corporate perspective The U.S. system of corporate survival is strictly a short term game. All of the forces in the marketplace reward the shortsighted and penalize the wise. It cuts down the chief executive officer (and his board of directors) who thinks long term and is willing to put his money where his strategy is. For example, CEO #1 and CEO #2 have similar companies with equivalent earnings. CEO #1 takes 30% of his earnings and invests it in a long term research project that he has faith in. CEO #2 shares that faith but chooses to retain that 30% as an earnings dividend to the shareholder. Company #1's stock, therefore, will be lower than Company #2's because its earnings are lower. Company #1, therefore, is more attractive to a takeover since its stock can be acquired at a lower price and it has a long term technology strategy. Company #2 is less attractive to a takeover for exactly the opposite reasons - higher stock price and less long term technological promise.  Page 20 Who is the better CEO? Who is the safer CEO? These are questions that will yield two different answers. This is especially true if company #2 uses its higher stock price to acquire company #1 and then slashes the research and development budget in order to help pay off the resultant debt. This is the true American corporate nightmare. We must enact fundamental changes to reverse this reality. It means charting new waters but it must be done. The role of CEO must be redefined in accordance with the new world economic realities. Historically the CEO was charged with maximizing the short term value of the stockholder's holdings, no more, no less. Any policy which veered from this approach was an invitation to hostile shareholder lawsuits. The new definition must include the notion of the CEO as keeper of the assets of the company. Those assets are all-inclusive - human, technological, physical and financial. The primary responsibility must be the advancement and growth of those assets over the long term. It must prevail over the policy of short term shareholder value that comes at the expense of the nation's long term need to have growing vibrant companies. We must get to the point where the pursuit of short term profits by destroying assets, selling off assets, and ravaging research and development budgets, will be seen as highly inappropriate. Unshackling a progressive CEO also demands that we redefine the proper role for corporate directors as we attempt to be internationally competitive. At issue here are the same concerns - i.e. corporate strategies and corporate time horizons. But it also involves the attendant issue of director exposure to shareholder lawsuits where the shareholder's interest is immediate cash-in value irrespective of management practices that strengthen the company's future. Corporate board meetings are generally focused on month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter reporting of data, as opposed to exhaustive examination of long term corporate strategies. We must implement ways for directors to support long term horizon strategies that benefit the company and the nation over the long haul and not have these directors subject to instant legal liability. I experienced this catch-22 while serving on the board of a publicly-held company. The corporation had accumulated excess cash as a result of divestitures and had to decide what to do with this resource. The choices were pretty straightforward. Keeping the cash on hand was an open invitation for a takeover bid by someone seeking to buy the company, take the cash and just dump the rest of the assets. This would weaken the remaining company dramatically and we all knew that. Distribution of the cash as dividends and a possible management buyout, etc. were a second possible approach. This was the safest of director options since it would be well received by the shareholders. The problem with it was simple. The company would not have gained any new strength as it ventured forth in the future. The cash would have been expended without impact on our competitive capability. It would have created a company with lesser viability over the long term.  Page 21 The final possibility was to use the cash to acquire a complementary second company and end up with a larger corporation. This would mean better market share, a broader technology base and real economies of scale. It was a classic example of technological synergy and corporation muscling up. An easy decision? Hardly. It was the decision most likely to put the directors at risk because we would be choosing to bet on long term stock appreciation rather than immediate shareholder gain. There was a direct correlation between director legal liability and preserving the company. Put another way, to maximize our own personal legal security, we would have had to vote to leave the company in a weakened position. We chose not to do so. We made the acquisition. The company is now profitable and the stock is appreciating. That's all very nice but I vividly remember walking to my car after the meeting wondering whether I had risked the financial well-being of my family by deciding to make the company as competitive as possible. What if the gamble had failed and I had been sued? Would I have been able to convince my family that their financial sacrifice was warranted? These dynamics are lethal to American competitiveness. Unless directors are convinced that long term strategies will not invite hostile takeovers, unless directors are convinced that supporting long term strategies will not expose them to serious legal exposure - unless these are the new realities in the corporate board room, nothing will change no matter how progressive corporate management wants to be. There is, admittedly, a very fine line here. The threat of stockholder lawsuits has a real and valid function. Corporate directors should fear a reckoning if they do not meet their fiduciary responsibilities. But why should short term shareholder value be considered more responsible by our legal system than long term competitive viability? Why should the defacto damaging of the nation's industrial capability be a safeguard against lawsuits? Somehow the ground rules have to change. We must seize the opportunity to step back and rethink existing assumptions. This would entail changing the scope of director responsibility to include the requirement that long term competitive viability be a standard component of any decision making process. Another would be a requirement that directors annually review research and development budgets both as to the percentage of the total corporate budget compared to competitors and as to the particular research agenda. Boards should include directors who possess relevant skills in the appropriate technologies and not just financial and management expertise. Another counterproductive assumption is the one that holds that every public corporation must release its financial data every three months. These quarterly reports define corporate America today. Their release triggers instant response by Wall Street and other like watchers. Nothing is as sacred as these quarterly announcements. Nothing is as traditional and nothing is as expected.  Page 22 Yet that doesn't make them necessarily valuable. Is it not time to ponder the following? Neither Japan nor Germany has such a practice. They rely upon annual reports. They are known to have much longer corporate time horizons than we do. We should explore the concept of stretching out quarterly reports to semi-annual reports. Or indeed even to just annual reports. If our very successful trading competitors do just nicely, thank you, without quarterly reports, why are they essential here? I would suggest that serving the gurus and traders and speculators and raiders of Wall Street is far less important than serving those within our companies who are trying to survive. Let the debate begin. The need is to stretch out corporate horizons. Quarterly reports do just the opposite. Management-Labor Attitude Changes The rhetoric about management-labor cooperation is oft-heard but needs a boost from the Presidential bully pulpit. Management must be encouraged to drop old attitudes about workers being the "other side" and to engage workers in true joint consultation and decision making. These are the only avenues to the kind of productivity and quality control necessary to have competitive products. There is a new awareness about the need to change archaic management techniques but change comes hard. Management of the old school still occupies too many executive suites, buttressed by too many old bulls in the board rooms. The President should give high and consistent visibility to companies that are inclusive in their practices and progressive in their techniques by visiting plants where these practices are in place. By publicly holding out such companies as models, it will help create an environment wherein regressive management techniques will be more and more isolated over time. It will bring about the kind of dialogue about management practices that will accelerate progressive change. This dialogue will provoke the kind of critical corporate self-analysis that too often happens only after Chapter 11 has been filed and the golden parachutes deployed. The need is for mid-course corrections, not better corporate autopsies. Correspondingly, the unions (and non-unions) must change more rapidly as well. Union officials should save their ammunition to fight for issues like wage scale, health benefits and worker safety. No effort should be expended trying to defend illogical work rules that are nothing but feather bedding. The common goal should be highest possible productivity at the highest possible wage rates. Many union officials have been very active in forging this new direction but if we are to be competitive there needs to be near unanimous acceptance of this perspective. A President, especially a Democratic President, should give overt support to progressive union leaders while being willing to criticize those who cling to outmoded views. This rationale applies equally to non-union work forces. The New American Mandate means workers who proudly embrace their responsibility to help their companies prosper.  Page 23 Companies saddled with management that distrusts its workforce combined with workforce leadership which feels no responsibility to maximize productivity are doomed. Such foolish leadership causes job loss for innocent workers and GNP loss for the country. Pick up any paper and you will read about such lamentable situations every day in almost every industry. The President has a role to play to guide management and labor away from such destructive practices. Economic Loyalty This is one area where the political leadership in both parties at every level has failed to call forth America's capacity to promote its own self-interest. Economic loyalty to one's fellow countrymen is not a value that is fashionable in America today. To raise the matter in a public speech is to cause more seat squirming than a discourse on safe sex. To suggest it to the generation of the 80's is to invite barely concealed disdain. Yet, what is loyalty to one's country? What is loyalty to one's fellow countryman? What is one's obligation to the larger societal "family" in times of economic distress? If, during the last four decades, I had sent $100 to the Soviet Union to aid them in their war effort against us I would have been justly accused of treason. I would be vilified by both conservatives and liberals as having aided and abetted a nation which threatens my country. Properly so. If, at the same time, I had sent $40,000 to Japan or Germany (or Great Britain, etc.) to aid them in their economic war effort against us, however friendly, I would be totally ignored by American conservatives. I would be the recipient of comments about how nice my Mercedes or Lexus (or Jaguar or Audi or BMW, etc.) looked. In addition, there would be absolutely no suggestion from American liberals that the American auto worker rendered unemployed by my car purchase decision should be of any relevance to me. We are in the grip of a kind of 1980's loyalty, that is, loyalty to one's self and one's image with no concern for the common wealth. Indeed, to suggest a rethinking of our collective responsibilities to each other is to encounter extreme defensiveness. This 1980's loyalty is not confined to "Me-Generation" fast trackers. The average corporate chief executive officer is often no better. Chances are excellent that he or she drives to work in an expensive foreign import, dressed to the nines in foreign shoes and clothing, all the while lamenting the decline of America's industrial base and the easy availability of capital in other countries. This is where the New American Mandate would seek to change attitudes. We used to think that patriotism was supporting our troops in the Persian Gulf and buying a Mercedes on the same day. The New American Mandate would be a lot more comprehensive.  Page 24 An American parable for the 1980's is as follows. A well paid engineer working for an American company buys an Infiniti. Six months later he/she gets a layoff notice because his/her company can't compete with its Japanese counterpart. The engineer drives home in a funk and never, never equates the two events. This is not an argument for a mindless Buy America policy. That approach suggested that we buy domestically produced items irrespective of all other considerations - such as quality and price. As the not-so proud owner of a Ford Pinto and Chevy Vega in my time, I am all too fully aware of the downside of such a policy. It promotes the laziness and inefficiency of any protectionist policy. It is more compassionate but ultimately leads to the same kind of inevitable manufacturing base deterioration. The incentive to excel is seriously weakened. But there are harbors of logical refuge between mindless Buy America and soulless 1980's non-loyalty. In between there are cases where a consumer is faced with choices where the distinctions are not so obvious. Economic loyalty is simply opting to put one's capital towards the strengthening of America, not the strengthening of another country. These are cases where the benefit of the doubt tips the scales in favor of the American product. The recent focus on quality control in American cars, for example, clearly offers such opportunities today. Finally, it should be emphasized that this is not a call for protectionism or foreign bashing. These two are the siren's temptation. The former is nothing more than the acceptance of full scale competitive retreat. It is a warm refuge but only temporary and eventually fatal. Erecting protectionist barriers is counterproductive. Our efforts should be focused on openness elsewhere and full reciprocity in world trade. The latter is equally dangerous. It is quite appropriate to criticize foreign countries when their policies are in error. Certainly there is no shortage of selfish and irresponsible practices carried out by our allies and trading partners. We should not be hesitant about pointing these out and calling for correction. Some politicians, however, go beyond this and seek to swim in the murky waters of demagoguery. Blaming foreign nations for our economic woes is standard fare for elected officials because it is invariably well received - particularly in areas of high unemployment. It is a lot more rewarding politically to bash imports than to suggest that there may be fault in attitudes or strategies here at home. This political tactic is avoidance politics of a different kind. It allows people to walk away resenting other nations when they should be demanding changes in how we do things in America. By continuing to persist in denial we put off the necessary self-examination and rethinking that will lead to true competitiveness. Thus, the foreign basher ultimately serves the interests of the foreigner by putting off the critical day of our own renewal.  Page 25 But the issue here is not just economic. It is social as well. A sense among consumers that we care about our fellow countrymen and are willing to demonstrate economic loyalty in their behalf strengthens the bonds between us. Imagine if a neighbor owned a particular business and you needed to buy a product sold by such a business. Is it not natural to want to give the neighbor your business if at all possible? Well, this is the same thing except your neighbor lives further away. The issue here is not about where productive economic loyalty ends and counterproductive Buy America begins. The issue is a collective recognition of the economic peril faced by our country. It is incorporating that recognition into our daily lives as a constant thought process. In the economic war we are all by definition soldiers because we are consumers. The issue is deciding which army we are part of. A final thought. This call for economic loyalty is in response to our current economic dilemma. The point here is not to despise foreign products. On the contrary, we all need a viable global economy with the free flow of goods across borders. The point is to calibrate our consumer decision making to the economic conditions prevailing in the country we all call home. In other times this would not be as relevant. In the happy future it will not be as necessary either. But in today's troubled conditions, it is very important. It is, ironically, calling upon Americans to begin to think the way Japanese corporate leaders and German consumers have acted for decades. They have viewed this attitude as a kind of deep patriotism. Hokey, isn't it? But who is buying up whose national treasures? Their citizens understand economic loyalty instinctively. It's about time we did the same. We are all part of one team. And we are tied to the success, or lack thereof, of all the other members of our team. Today an American professor, for example, is paid less than her German counterpart teaching the same subject matter and more than her British counterpart. Since the skills are equivalent, why are the salaries different? Very simple. The German "team" is doing very well, the American "team" less well and the British "team" even less well. The American professor is being dragged down by the relative lack of success of her "team." Does that professor ever think in these terms? Very doubtful. But we must bring about that kind of awareness. The role here of our political leadership is to make Americans aware that if one American worker is thrown overboard, we are all dragged down just a bit. The more of our team members that are cast overboard, the further down we all go. What it comes down to is this. I go to buy a product, let's say an automobile. I live in a cold climate and want four-wheel drive capability. My choice is narrowed to a Jeep and an Isuzu. My judgment will involve issues like style and cost. But it doesn't end there. When I see the Jeep I sense an American autoworker who will remain employed if I buy it. I derive a quiet pleasure knowing that my money will remain in our economy and multiply. I instinctively understand that my economic well-being will eventually be determined by the economic well-being of every other American. I think like a Japanese would. Or a German would. I think like an economic patriot.  Page 26 II. Education - The Meeting House of Our Society America in the 1990's will rise or fall as our public schools rise or fall. The health of our school systems is the major building block determinant of our long term economic and social viability. Knowledge is power. Work skills are power. Real power. Real economic power. The lack of knowledge and work skills is weakness. It is economic impotence. It is the transition from greatness to irrelevance. Knowledge and work skills are also hope. They are the only source of social mobility available to millions of our fellow citizens. They are what turns despair into hope. Only they can create true opportunity so that young people choose lives of promise over lives of personal and societal destructiveness. Education is America's great calling. Education, ah, education. Everyone is for it. It is the motherhood and apple pie issue of the 90's. Well, at least the rhetoric would suggest so. The reality is quite different. Republicans talk about it. President Bush, during the campaign, said that he wanted to be known as the education President. No one would call him that two years later. Money for the Persian Gulf and Star Wars and the Stealth bomber? Sure. Money for serious funding of schools? Gee, that's really a local and state issue. Money for serious skills training for non-college bound students? Gee, that's not how we think in America. Democrats love to talk about it as well. As with the Republicans, the talk is not purposefully false. It is, in fact, well intentioned. But improvements in education to many Democrats only means a lot more money. It does not mean serious structural reform. Cutting edge issues like merit pay and teacher competence standards are offensive to some teacher unions and as a result some Democrats oppose them. Controversial experiments like Boston University's takeover of the Chelsea schools, national testing of high school seniors, school choice, magnet schools for young black male students, uniforms for public school students, limiting bilingual education - all make Democrats very nervous. This is not to argue that any of these ideas is valid. This is to argue that new and radical concepts need to be tested. We need an atmosphere where the search for educational excellence is an objective undiluted by considerations as to what some interest groups may oppose. Businessmen talk about education as well. They opine about how critical a well-trained and educated workforce is to their survival. Some business leaders - David Kearns of Xerox and John Akers of IBM come to mind - have become national spokesmen in behalf of public education. They have put this issue at the forefront of their personal agendas and have rendered the nation a great service by doing so. They, however, are not typical.  Page 27 Go to the corporate suites of your Fortune 1000 companies and ask a very simple question of the chief executive officers and members of the board of directors. When was the last time you set foot in a public school classroom? The answers would reveal the obvious. The issue of quality public education does not enjoy the personal involvement of the very people who proclaim its vital importance. And in some cases, they are even putting their resources toward ballot initiatives that would reduce taxes and devastate public education. Is public education the top priority in America? Is it the vehicle to provide true opportunity for those who don't happen to be affluent? Is it the only way of having a workforce capable of competing against its international counterparts? Is it the place where our societal values are reinforced, and, sadly, in some cases, introduced for the first time? The answer to these questions must be a resolute "Yes!" resounding from coast to coast. Yes, it means money. Real money. It means that when budget crunches come, public education is not viewed as the obvious candidate for slashing. Today it is. As chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Regents, I saw a Democratic governor cut the public higher education budget by 22% from 1988 to 1990 while state appropriations as a whole increased 18%. Then, in 1991, we found ourselves with a Republican governor whose staff was seeking ways to actually close three to five campuses. Education, thus, has been an equal opportunity candidate for bi-partisan attack. Why? Well, in Massachusetts both governors were openly pro-education in their public pronouncements. That did not prevent the bloodletting. Political realities intruded. There is one fundamental truth at work here. Students in K through 12 can't vote. And students in public colleges often don't vote. Unless these students are protected by their voting elders, in particular the business community, they are vulnerable because they have no counterattack capability. Making public education a top priority means openness to new - even radical - notions of educational innovation. Let's criticize bold ideas after they have been found to be flawed, not before they are tested. This means structural reform. Merit pay and standards of teacher competence. School based management. Uniform testing standards for graduating seniors. Parental involvement in choosing teachers. Parental and teacher involvement in choosing principals. Longer school days. The powers that be in the teacher unions must be leaders in bringing about these necessary changes. Some already are. All must be. The same is true with school officials, school committees, mayors and city councils. Finally, and most fundamentally, it means that all of America must get to know what the inside of a classroom looks like. Parents are going to have to invest their time in the buildings where their children are fashioning the dimensions of their lives. Teachers are going to have to be assisted. They are going to have to be  Page 28 made to feel as important as their task really is. They are also going to have to be scrutinized. Parents are going to have to be able to know the differences in teaching philosophies. They must learn to tell when a principal is being creative and caring, and when a principal is just playing out the string. Parents are also going to have to see their role as nurturing children other than their own in these classrooms. Parents should help involve retirees and grandparents in this task as well. The public schools should become the meeting houses of our society where all of our society is walking through the school doors on a regular basis. This is the New American Mandate. This approach must involve institutions as well as individuals. I would suggest the following matrix. The public schools (pre-K through 12) are at the center of the matrix. Arranged around it are four centers of institutional capability and energy. Each of the four focuses its efforts towards the public school center. The four are public higher education, private higher education, non-profit institutions (clergy, hospitals, museums, foundations, performing arts, etc.) and the business community. What this translates into is the rector, the priest, the rabbi, the museum director, the lawyer, the executive vice president, the faculty member, the college hockey coach, the chief executive officer, the surgeon, the secretary, the shop foreman, the researcher, the union organizer - all will be in the classrooms, affirming by their very presence the criticality of education. What do they do there? Anything. Everything. It will range from a once-a-year reading to a third grade class to once-a-month tutoring of a particular student. It will mean a corporate funded day spent at a college campus to expose sixth graders to the notion that college may be relevant to them. It may mean mentoring a whole class and taking responsibility for elevating their horizons, their career sightlines. Does this make a difference? That is no longer a question. There are staggering examples of outsiders radically affecting the lives of students whose classes they become part of. The Dr. Eugene Lang intervention at his Bronx alma mater junior high school is the most acclaimed example but there are countless others. It works. Hopefully, we can get to the point where every student in every classroom has someone beyond the overloaded teacher caring about his or her future. That outside person must attest to the basic truth that as goes public education so goes America. The interface of these people and the classroom will, of course, change things forever. Everyone investing his or her time in a classroom will, by definition, become a committed advocate for quality education. This will translate into real political power in behalf of the educational system. It will also translate into corporate and non-corporate resources being funneled to the system. To educators, that is the good news. More threatening will be the sense of overview, and the realization that these outsiders will be rendering judgements about the performance of teachers and administrators. Some will balk at this, unsure of this brave new world. They cannot be allowed to prevail.  Page 29 These intervenors should be seen as a wonderful resource. They can help seek out technical assistance relationships with colleges and corporations, both as to teaching theories as well as management techniques. It will be a different world. Committed, competent teachers and administrators will welcome the respect and caring. The new found availability of resources will strengthen their sense of the relevance of their profession. The political leaders must by their personal actions bring about this "meetinghouse of our society." That's how one becomes the education President or the education Governor or the education Congressman. The President must be willing to devote considerable personal time to make this happen. It must be an unrelenting theme. The President must be the Principal-In-Chief. New Educational Needs There are two areas where the discussion on education has finally begun to focus. First is the pre-kindergarten stage. More and more it is becoming obvious that the experiences of a child at the youngest ages predetermines his or her capacity to learn in a school setting. Youngsters arriving at school from dysfunctional families are immediately at a disadvantage. There is a much greater likelihood of their academic efforts being rendered futile before they even begin. We are going to have to focus resources on children from difficult environments in the pre-kindergarten years (ala Headstart) and during the after-school hours when these children confront the reality of empty apartments and homes. The second area of new focus is skills training. There is now a steady drumbeat from observers that the great shortfall in American education involves not the student who goes to college but the student who doesn't. It is the "non-college bound post-secondary gap." The great economic challenge that we face will be fought in the trenches of the workplace. It will be a competition of skills. There will be a direct link between the skills of the nation's workforce and the resultant standard of living of that nation. Manufacturers will go where the workforce is the most highly skilled, no matter where that may be. This is not a matter of choice for them. It is a matter of being competitive. If our non-supervisory workers are less skilled than their foreign counterparts they will be paid wages that reflect that reality. Third world skills will command third world wages. Highly paid jobs will move offshore and we will be left with the unattractive residuals.  Page 30 And, if our workforce continues to experience deterioration of wage scales the rest of the economy will deteriorate as well. Thus, in this new world economic order it is not just the capacity of the highly educated which determines our fate, it is the skill levels of the basic worker as well. A skilled American workforce will provide good jobs for educated managers and professionals. An unskilled American workforce will not. The whole system implodes together. Not surprisingly, our competitors have discovered this already. In Japan, skills are learned in the companies because the companies expect workers to remain with them for the duration of their careers. In America, the reality of three year worker turnover causes our companies to be wary of such an investment. In Germany, the school system coordinates this effort and students are in school/work situations at the age of sixteen. In France, companies are taxed 1% on their sales. If they do worker training they don't pay the tax. If they don't, they pay the tax and the government does the training. Three models to achieve the same critical end. We have allowed this need to escape serious attention until recently. I believe the French model deserves consideration but adapted to the American context with its vocational technical schools and community colleges taking the lead. This is a constructive approach to a problem that confronts us. For Democrats, it is far better to pursue this option than to criticize companies for moving their operations offshore. Such criticism will never have a beneficial effect. Companies are never going to forego profitability and competitiveness in order to placate Democratic outrage. These companies are not being un-American, they are simply responding to a perceived differential in the quality of the workforce. To forestall such moves, we have only to provide a workforce that is equally skilled. Certainly for reasons of logistics and management control, any American company would prefer to have its operations as close by as possible. And finally, it has been my experience that American CEO's are more nationalistic than they are given credit for. They want a stronger America. It's our job to help them make the decision that's right for America without diminishing the viability of their companies.  Page 31 III. The Environment - Equilibrium With Earth There has always been an environmental constituency. Unlike many interest groups its objective has historically not been its own economic well-being. Its goal has been the preservation of nature, a sense of being at one with the land and water and air and all the creatures which co-inhabit this planet. That core environmental constituency has been a political bedrock, hundreds of thousands, indeed, millions of people, feeling very strongly about the legitimacy of their cause. What is different about this issue in the modern day is the newly recruited battalions to the environmentalist army and the breadth of their concerns. The historic group (begun in large part by moderate Republicans) is sometimes dismissed as "tree-huggers." (It is ironic that someone's love of a tree could be viewed as a negative characteristic.) The modern coalition, however, involves people whose interests are much closer to home. It involves citizens who have been affected by toxic dump sites or air pollution or have come to fear the quality of the water they drink. These newly minted conservationists are going to be no less committed to the cause of environmental protection. Indeed, in many respects they bring a kind of passion that has been sometimes absent. A despoiled earth will not be tolerated by human beings dependent upon a clean earth for survival. Now there is a third group in this coalition. This group is largely a time-of-being phenomenon. It is the post-Cold War generation. If one sees generations in terms of time frames and definitive events, the progression in recent times arguably would be Depression/World War II, Cold War, and Vietnam/Civil Rights/Nuclear War. When the Berlin Wall came crashing down, the spectre of East-West nuclear confrontation was rendered highly improbable. The young people now coming of age know, and will only know, the return of democracy to Eastern Europe and the centrifugal forces at play in a weakened Soviet Union. An era has passed and with it much of the fear of a superpower caused nuclear winter. As this generation analyzes the world in which it will mature and live out its years, it does not perceive a world of calm and quietude. It perceives other dislocations. And one of the most severe stems from the mindless abuse of our planet by generations focused on other issues. This new generation sees a world of possible climatic cataclysm, of a world buried in its own excessive trash, a world where the air they will breath will threaten the health of themselves and of the children they are beginning to bear. They see virgin forests of antiquity falling to greed. And they see population growth which threatens to turn the future of mankind into an endless series of bloody clashes over ever-limited resources.  Page 32 Simply put, they sense global disequilibrium. The earth is not at peace with its inhabitants. We are consuming resources at a rate which is not generationably sustainable. We see population growth rendering third world cities dysfunctional. We are despoiling this mother spaceship and will eventually render it hostile to human well-being. Our young think differently than we do. As we get older the time frame we think in shrinks because our remaining time on earth has lessened. Not so the young. With their sense of their own immortality they can look out and see forever. A planet in disequilibrium is hazy to short-term focused adults. It is alarmingly clear to our offspring. They know they will inherit the consequences. I learned this lesson soon after the Valdez oil spill in Alaska. I was driving through Chatham on Cape Cod and noticed that I needed gasoline. Without much thought I turned into the nearest service station and pulled up next to the pumps. There came an immediate howl from my three children. I had stopped at an Exxon station. They demanded that I drive away. My response to them was that this particular gas station owner had no responsibility for the oil spill. They rejected that argument as irrelevant. I was patronizing a despoiler of the environment. No more. No less. Their voices reached an insistent crescendo of righteousness and I decided to drive off to calm the din. The incident troubled me. As the Senate co-author of the Alaska Lands Act, I have always seen myself as an ardent and committed environmentalist. I always saw myself as the defender of Alaska's wonders. My children, however, were beyond me in their sensitivity. How different from what I thought about when I was their age. They had become dedicated environmental activists and I had never noticed. We should welcome their alarm. It calls us to a true stewardship of our environment. And such a stewardship is uniquely American. We are the continental nation. Descendents of Teddy Roosevelt and Ansel Adams. We should see this calling as returning home to what we are truly all about. Specifically what? International Leadership It is appalling that we were the most notable footdraggers at the recent international convention on global warming. So much for George Bush being the environmental President. We must lead the charge for global conservationism. If not us, who? If not now, when? Washington has true champions of the environment in the House and Senate and in the EPA. Let the White House use its influence to spread that commitment throughout the land and across this globe. Let the New American Mandate establish the principle that love of earth is mainstream America, a reflection of the best of us in all of us.  Page 33 The vehicle for doing this would be to proclaim the goal of global equilibrium. This means the pursuit of policies and lifestyles that allow the consumption of resources to be consistent with having an inhabitable planet over the generations. The issues here are obvious. Global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer are the most noted but they are merely the tip of the melting iceberg. These two issues deserve the highest level of attention and concern rather than the jittery avoidance that has characterized the Reagan-Bush years. I chaired the first hearings on global warming as a Congressman in June, 1977. It was an issue that was obscure to some, but all too relevant to those who testified. In the absence of any White House or media concern the matter remained dormant until the very hot summer of 1988. All of a sudden it was a topic of popular discourse. That is not how serious issues should be confronted. The White House needs to establish a national dialogue on the scientific data. Pretending that these matters are secondary is risking the lives of millions of people should they ever come to pass. A Recycling Ethic Ancient history is often marked by great events that took place at large feasts or simple small repasts. From the tales of Homer in ancient Greece to the beginnings of the world's great faiths, history was often made when people broke bread together. The archeologists of today are unable to find virtually any artifacts from those events. But the archeologists in the year 2991 will be able to unearth artifacts of millions upon millions of meals consumed in 1991. They need only go to the local landfill and dig a bit. There they will discover the true artifact of our time - the disposable, once used, plastic utensil. In addition, they will find all kinds of commodities specifically designed to be thrown away rather than repaired when they are broken. The age of the disposable society must give way to the age of recycling. Recycling must become as much an automatic personal habit as brushing one's teeth. Again, here, as in other issues referred to previously, it is a matter of mindset. Such a mindset already exists. But its existence is inversely proportional to the age of the person. The young do not thoughtlessly dispose of aluminum cans into trash cans as do many of their parents. They want to collect them for recycling. There is great promise here. As a member of the Recycling Advisory Council, I am struck at how willing corporate America is to move in this direction. In many respects they are far ahead of the politicians. Much is happening. Americans instinctively want to be in harmony with their environment. A clear call for sustainable lifestyles will be received with great response. Let us sound that call.  Page 34 Such a call has to be backed up by government procurement policies at the local, state and federal level that give real preference to recycled products. This will help to establish markets that are now often fledgling and vulnerable. It means introducing a virgin materials fee. This would give recycled commodities only a slight economic competitive advantage over virgin products, but it would set a tone as to the need for manufacturers to rethink procurement practices. The proceeds from such a fee would be channeled to help with recycling and disposal costs. It means setting up a commission to establish a consistent standard for consumer guidance so that a "green" label or a "recycling" label has specific meaning and consumers can express their environmentalism with their pocketbooks. There can be no doubt that environmental consumerism is the nuclear weapon of recycling. It only needs specific guidelines in order to be fully unleashed. Once this happens, the market will respond accordingly. Only by having functioning markets for recycled goods can we hope to achieve any worthwhile level of recycling. It means establishing product design standards to maximize recyclability. It means policies that minimize waste materials in the manufacturing processes of American companies. It means packaging standards that result in the least use of throw-away materials and the greatest use of containers that are earth friendly. The objective of all these policies should be to create a mindset of avid consumer and governmental activism so that an equilibrium lifestyle becomes a simple matter of every day habit and behavior. Global Warming The issues here are well known. We need energy policies which maximize the investment in conservation and renewables and which minimize the burning of those fossil fuels which cause the greatest emissions. On the cutting edge here are the utilities. Federal and state regulatory policies should tie a utility's rate of return to its commitment to energy conservation and the encouragement of renewable energy sources. The loss of a utility's revenue base caused by using less fossil fuel based energy should result in a net plus in the utility's rate of return. That rate of return should be above that which could be achieved by the usual standards of proper financial and technical management. Utilities must be put in a position to maximize their shareholders' value by aggressively and relentlessly pursuing policies consistent with the need to reduce global warming. We also need policies which maximize the planting of carbon dioxide consuming trees both in America and worldwide and which minimize the need to cut down existing trees anywhere. There are going to have  Page 35 to be serious discussions about how to save tropical rain forests which are so vital to any effort to lessen the buildup of carbon dioxide. Telling countries not to demolish their forests is as effective as their telling us to reduce our energy consumption. These countries will not adopt policies which benefit mankind but go against their national economic self interests. The developed world has to be prepared to tip the economic scales in exchange for the obvious benefits it will receive. This is an area where we can turn to the Japanese and Germans and ask them to take the lead. They had all sorts of reasons for bypassing the Persian Gulf war. We expended our resources to safeguard their interests. Here is an opportunity for them to do the same for all of us in preserving the great forests in the developing world. A planet threatened by rising oceans is in no less peril than one threatened by a Saddam Hussein. This is a brave new world and quite uncomfortable. But global warming isn't very comfortable either. Planting trees should be a national passion. It should be a normal and recurring event at schools, in city parks, at factories, in backyards and front yards. The President should make this a standard ceremony when visiting various parts of the country. It would be a ceremony with real moral purpose - a purpose instinctively understood by our young. The earlier section on recycling is applicable here since it is the use of wood products to make paper which consumes an enormous number of trees. We must get to the point where the paper we write on, the newspapers we read, and the circulars we receive in the mail are all printed on recycled paper. One major obstacle here will be some in the press since the commitment to environmentalism in the editorial department is sometimes not matched by the vice-president of business operations. The latter will go on for hours on why today's high speed newspaper printing process cannot use recycled paper due to lessened fiber strength. Come on, fourth estate. Let's see total leadership here. Land Use Loss of woodlands, open space and farm land is the result of investment dollars being used for development. The implosion of many of our urban centers is the result of an absence of investment dollars being used for development. We deplore the loss of the natural landscape. We deplore the decline of our urban centers. Since neither has to occur, there must be a better way. Development dollars flow in very prescribed channels. As a partner in a development company, I know this all too well. Forming these channels are tax laws, zoning regulations, investment incentives, and land use policies such as height restrictions, green space requirements, and the like. Government sets the channels and the market place responds accordingly. Developers go where government tells them  Page 36 to go whether or not it makes any sense. The battle over development pits conservationists against developers. It should be conservationists against government officials since the developers are only building where and what the laws allow. The late 1980's saw this truth play itself out on Cape Cod. As chairman of a state environmental task force I had proposed the idea of a moratorium on development on the Cape. The notion created a firestorm and I was villified by developers and town officials and state legislators. They deemed the idea irresponsible and stated their strong belief that it would die of its own illogic. No elected officials beyond a few isolated selectmen came to my defense. The Boston political establishment was nowhere to be found. Then a funny thing happened. The Boston Globe did a poll and found that two-thirds of the Cape inhabitants supported the concept and fully three-fourths endorsed the regional land use planning proposal known as the Cape Cod Planning Commission. This revelation raised the political stakes considerably. When I scheduled a hearing at Cape Cod Community College, I was picketed and hecklled at by hundreds of developers and construction workers. In response, the Cape's conservationist community began to organize in earnest and the battles lines were drawn. Charges and countercharges were the order of the day and soon no one was safe from the controversy. The issues were placed on the ballot and we won handily. In a subsequent 1990 special election, the planning commission was enacted into law despite a severe economic downturn that had seen development come to a virtual halt. In the end, the developers saw me and the conservationists as the enemy. The conservationists, in turn, saw the developers as the enemy. I, however, did not blame the developers. They were only trying to make a living. I blamed the elected town officials who had determined the rules of the game. They were the ones who had allowed unconstrained development that was at variance with the wishes of their constituents. They could have prevented the abuses by voting the appropriate safeguards. They chose not to. As a result, the battle between developers and the conservationist community was unavoidable. It could have been otherwise. It should have been otherwise. It serves little purpose to constantly have these battles over development issues. The end result is often exhaustion, bitterness and/or bankruptcy. It would be far better to establish land use guidelines that everyone understands and which reflect a community's consensus. That is what political leadership is paid to do. The reason that all this means something has to do with two values. First, it is the preservation of the land that God gave to us. There is a spirituality to our surroundings. Primitive people understand this. Modernized people often don't. Secondly, it is the retention of the unique character of all the places which make up America. It is who we are as contrasted to who everyone else in the world is.  Page 37 The role of the Federal government here is primarily to articulate the importance of these values and to adopt policies that support its position. These are essentially local and state matters, but the feds should also look at their own approaches. It should do a systematic analysis of existing federal tax laws (such as the various depletion allowances) to see if they are incompatible with these values . It should also reexamine the adequacy of tax and funding policies which would direct investment away from open space to our urban centers (such as historic preservation tax credits, urban enterprise zones, UDAG grants, etc.) It should further look for other opportunities to preserve open space. The scheduled closure of some of our military bases that was announced recently would be such an opportunity. Finally, it should encourage mayors and governors and legislatures and city councils to consider the issue more pointedly. Visits to places that have preserved land or retained a sense of character should be high on the agenda of top governmental officials, including the President and Vice President. Again, as in previous sections, the above is not meant to be exhaustive of policy initiatives but rather is suggestive of a philosophy that would cause us to constantly think in terms of an equilibrium with the earth. Population Control Nothing would serve the cause of environmental equilibrium as much as population control. Nothing would insure environmental disequilibrium as much as the world's population growing uncontrollably. The same can be said relative to the issues of energy use and world social order. The earth is simply not capable of accommodating endless human expansion. We are increasing at a rate of 93 million people a year. In 1830 there were one billion people. In 1990 there are 5.3 billion. Within the next decade we will increase population equivalent to all the inhabitants of Africa and South America combined. Towns have become cities. And cities have become megalopolises. It cannot continue. The dilemma is not food. We can produce enough to feed the world's current population. People starve today because of political instability and the failure of food distribution systems. The starvation in Ethiopia and the Sudan is made even more tragic by the fact that it need not be. The real dilemma of unconstrained population growth is three-fold. First, while food stuffs can be produced every year into infinity, fossil fuel energy cannot. The earth is energy resource limited and those limits are very real. (More on this in the next section.)  Page 38 Secondly, the world's burgeoning population is streaming into the major cities, particularly in the third world, and rendering those cities virtually unworkable. This is a formula for great social and political upheaval in the wake of serious degradation of even the most basic quality of life in those cities. Thirdly, the growing consumption of, and demand for, natural resources is virtually unsustainable. There is just so much clean air. Just so much clean water. Just so many available landfills. Just so many ways to dispose of hazardous wastes. The land and the oceans are receiving unspeakable volumes of waste each and every day. The earth was never meant to be a giant waste disposal unit. To pretend that it can is to threaten human survival. None of this is new. No one doubts the inevitable consequences of unlimited population expansion. So why don't we take it seriously? The reason, very simply, is domestic politics. The Reagan-Bush years have been marked by open hostility to family planning worldwide. While the Democrats supported such efforts as quietly as possible hoping no one would notice, the Republicans saw it as a clear opportunity to placate domestic political interest groups. The Reagan-Bush approach has bought marvelous political self-benefit at the expense of future social dislocation. And they don't care one bit. We Democrats must care. Our obligation lies beyond the Roger Ailes perspective. We will be judged in future years by how well and how forcefully we began the drive for a stable world population. In this regard the New American Mandate is a moral imperative that is worldwide in its responsibility.  Page 39 IV. Energy, Fossil Fuels - Someday There Won't Be Any There are two basic realities about energy facing Americans. First, we have no national energy policy (presuming that importing oil does not qualify as such a policy). Sadly, it took the war in the Persian Gulf to again make this obvious. The 1980's decade of energy issue avoidance has hopefully come to an end although the White House may be the last to acknowledge it. Second, our energy use is based almost exclusively upon the consumption of finite energy resources (particularly oil) and that is, by definition, unsustainable over the long term. This will eventually create ever-deepening crises of supply and cause desperate and powerful nations to seek to acquire remaining oil reserves by force. All of this was foreseen long ago by energy and military analysts. Again, witness the Persian Gulf where the world's dependence upon foreign oil reserves greatly raised the stakes in the current confrontation. Put it another way. The earth has provided a finite amount of fossil fuels for its inhabitants. The number of inhabitants rises every year increasing total energy use. The per capita consumption of these fossil fuels also increases as more and more countries become industrialized and as more and more people enjoy energy-intensive lifestyles. This dilemma will not be solved by asking developing countries to forego comforts which we take for granted. Every year the total energy use is subtracted from what the earth started out with. Since supply is always heading downward and use is always heading upward, sooner or later what the nations need will not be available. At first, prices that are confiscatory beyond measure will mean that the rich will have energy resources and the poor will not. But even that inequity will not be sustainable as each year drains more fossil fuels. Eventually even supply at any price will not be possible. Nations will continually go to war to survive. Today that is self-evident. To make matters worse, most of the earth's readily obtainable oil reserves are in one of the most unstable areas of the world politically. Thus the prospect of war exists into the future, long after Saddam Hussein has passed from the scene. The discussion of this issue reveals the limited capacity of middle-aged decision makers to think in terms beyond their expected lifespans. When 55 year oil experts talk in glowing terms about a 50 year supply of that resource, that means they are confident of supply during their expected natural lives. That is reassuring. It is, however, less reassuring to their 25 year old children who are not certain they will have died by the age of 75. It is obviously not at all reassuring to their five year old grandchildren. Let's up the estimate to 100 years. Nothing changes in respect to our moral obligation not to visit certain calamity upon future generations. This is where the issue of purpose comes into play. This is where the New American Mandate comes into play.  Page 40 If we are dealing with a finite resource; if we are depleting that resource; and if we are not aggressively pursuing policies to bring about energy use based on renewables; then we are condemning a future generation to the unspeakable. Which generation? Who knows? The next one or the one after that or the one after that? The moral burden does not lift; our purpose must be to assure the survival of those future generations. We need a national energy policy. Such a policy must view current use patterns as unacceptable, particularly the return to overreliance upon imported oil. It must view the long term goal as minimizing finite resource use, again, especially oil. The future must be based upon energy resources that are sustainable. One mission is to get from here to there in as smooth a transition as possible. That will take decades, intense investment, rethinking, and lifestyle modification. The alternative is to request that God replace all the oil and gas that we've consumed. That would certainly be a lot easier but in case He chooses to let us resolve this matter by ourselves, an energy policy will be required. Yearly Supply-Demand Report The reasons the country doesn't have an energy policy are complex. But one reason stems from the fact that the general public has little idea how much oil, gas and coal reserves we have in this country. There are experts who know - or think they know - but the average person is just never brought into the discussion. There should be an annual Supply-Demand Report detailing the best estimates of oil, gas and coal reserves. Such data collection is already being done. But it is buried. This report should be the subject of focused presidential attention and annual Congressional hearings. The purpose here is simple. If there are actions required to be taken in order to secure our energy future, they will only be accepted if the people of this nation know the true facts. During the 1980's we reverted back to extreme foreign oil dependence but it was done silently. Few people in the Congress or on Main Street were aware that oil imports in 1990 averaged 42%, their highest level since 1979 and up from 35% in 1973. Oil from the Persian Gulf accounted for 24% of all U.S. oil imports in 1989, up from 17% in 1987. The Reagan-Bush administrations saw no need to make reference to or bring these facts forcefully to the attention of the public. Avoidance politics prevailed once more. Then, all of a sudden, we are at war in the Persian Gulf and oil is a critical cause of our involvement. The yearly debate over the Supply-Demand Report would educate both government officials and the general public if it were given due notice when it is released.  Page 41 Maximize Conservation This one is self-evident. Every barrel of oil not consumed is a barrel of oil preserved for future generations. Every MCF of gas not burned, every ton of coal - all are stored in loving deference to our descendents. This is the New American Mandate extended to those future Americans whose viability is in our hands. Conservation has become more mainstream, largely free from the early notions that it was somewhat "soft." In those days real tough men produced energy. Conservation was the domain of the timid little old tree hugger ladies and unwashed hippies. Today it is the domain of corporate CEO's who see the savings to their bottom lines. Mainstream, however, is not enough. It must become the number one energy priority. This means a return to the debates of yesteryear - efficiency standards, tax credits. It also means higher rates of return for utilities that maximize their commitment to conservation and load management and a lesser rate of return for utilities that don't. Such a rate differential should be significant enough to thoroughly incentivize utility CEO's. These companies are our most effective energy army and they are already deployed. Using them is far preferable to devising new untested approaches using public employees. And it can be done. When I became a director of Boston Edison in 1985 I was a committed conservationist coming into a company that was known to be hostile to any of the so-called demand side management options. The outside environmental community - and the state Department of Public Utilities - had harshly criticized Boston Edison for its attitude. I shared much of their perspective and struggled inside the board to bring about change. This effort led to much company turmoil and in the end to serious management changes. Boston Edison is now a recognized leader in demand side management. But the lesson here is not the obvious one. Yes, there was inertia. Yes, there was resentment against policies advocated by people who were always critical anyway. But I believe the major resistance was pure market place. The regulators and environmentalists were calling upon Edison to pursue policies that were at variance with the cherished principles of market share retention and resultant shareholder value. They were being asked to use their resources to shrink their revenue base. It was totally counter intuitive for people who had spent their careers concerned about profitability. This fierce resistance can instantly become fierce support if regulators just change the rules. To truly maximize conservation we must make it in the economic self-interest of utilities to become devoted conservationists. Conservation also means higher gasoline prices. As usual, George Bush blanches when asked to do this by his energy policy advisers. His recently announced energy policy is warmed over Reagan with production taking center stage and conservation belittled. It is a sad lesson of American politics that a President would send troops to defend oil rich nations but not be willing to take the tough political  Page 42 steps necessary to reduce domestic oil demand. I understand the politics. It's just the ethics that I can't fathom. Washington should have a predictable policy of raising the Federal excise tax on gasoline. It should be raised a certain amount each year, every year, so that consumers can make sensible decisions about the cars they will drive before the annual increases go into effect. Three to five cents a year each year would be one possibility. Nothing, but nothing, promotes the purchase of fuel efficient cars like anticipated higher gas prices. That is an unavoidable fact of life. It has been years since automobile ads spoke of fuel efficiency. All of today's ads speak of acceleration and power and mightiness. While this measure will not be well-received, a three to five cents a year annual increase would not begin to reach today's tax levels in virtually all other Western nations. Japan, Germany and Italy, for example, have gas prices exceeding $3 a gallon. They have faced the issue. We have only just begun. The loss of American lives in the Persian Gulf is an unacceptable price to pay for the once-understandable desire to keep gas prices low. Our need to lessen oil import dependence should no longer be a national objective supported by lofty rhetoric but devoid of the meaningful actions needed to accomplish that objective. It also means higher federal taxes on fuel inefficient automobiles that are then rebated, dollar for dollar, to purchasers of fuel efficient automobiles. The consumer buying a car consistent with our national energy policy should be subsidized by the consumer buying a car at variance with that policy. Finally, it means greater investments in mass transit and the rail system. These would be funded by the gas tax. Again, those who use energy efficient means should be rewarded for such use. It is astonishing to think that we are still debating how much should be allocated to mass transit as opposed to new highways. This debate can only happen in an atmosphere wherein no national energy policy exists. These measures must be matched by all-out efforts to achieve conservation internationally. The electricity and transportation systems are particularly inefficient in many third world countries. The United Nations must put this effort at the top of their energy funding agenda. We must cause this to happen. Maximize Renewables This is the future. Solar, wind, hydro, etc. We were on the road to making these technologies viable when the Reagan administration blew away the funding for them. There is an enormous amount of research and development necessary before some of these technologies become truly affordable and operational. But in terms of long-term national security interest, the Gulf crisis should make it clear that energy dependence is no bargain. Better to spend billions to make those technologies viable than to spend many more billions funding the consequences of energy dependence. Here again the utilities are prime-time players. Utilities that aggressively promote these technologies should enjoy a higher rate of return than those that don't.  Page 43 Finally, it should be noted that every dollar spent on renewables (and conservation) remains in the economy and multiplies. To the extent that American-based solutions exist, they should be preferred over imported solutions in pursuit of the simple goal of keeping U.S. dollars at home. Thus, a dollar paid to an installer of insulation or invested in a wind energy project stays here and circulates. The benefit of that over sending a dollar overseas to purchase oil is not insignificant. Research into Nuclear Options This one is not self-evident. But it is necessary nonetheless. Let's say we maximize conservation and renewables tomorrow. Let's also agree that by doing so we have stretched out the fossil fuel reserves by twenty, fifty, even one hundred years. There's still a very real problem. We will never arrive at a time of energy use based solely on renewables. There must be a major base load energy capability that is sustainable. Inevitably that capability has to be nuclear. The fact that this is an unhappy reality does not make it any less of a reality. The other base-load alternative is massive reliance on coal and that is not possible in an era of real concern over global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions. Every nuclear power plant operating in the world today represents millions of barrels of oil not consumed. Indeed, one can, ironically, argue that we have served our descendants by the use of nuclear power since they will inherit the oil we did not use. Each plant also represents tens of millions of dollars not sent to OPEC but kept in the American economy. This call for nuclear power, of course, goes against every instinct of most environmentalists. It also offends those concerned with the issue of nuclear safety and the attendant issue of the disposal of nuclear waste. These concerns are very real and will never disappear. When I was struggling with the issue of nuclear power as a Congressman and Senator in the 1970's, there was furious debate among my staff members and outside advisors. The split saw my strong environmental supporters aligned with my political advisors. The argument was clear. Environmentalists were fiercely anti-nuclear. They were my most dedicated loyalists. And they had valid concerns that were always being casually dismissed by utilities and governments alike. Being anti-nuclear would be substantively correct and politically beneficial. On the other side was my energy staff person. He was not unsympathetic to the logic arrayed against him. He thought the nuclear industry and the utilities had been mindless, stubborn and reactionary. He thought that they had become their own worst enemy for good reason. But, he asked, if you eliminate nuclear what do you put in its stead? What exactly is the replacement process for shutting down the nuclear option? Tell me specifically what substitutes for what.  Page 44 At first we provided the expected response about conservation and renewables. But when you tried to put numbers on them, there was a huge gap no matter how aggressively we pushed these options. That left oil, gas and coal. All were finite and oil and coal had particular problems if you overloaded the system with them. While gas would be a clean energy source it would not substitute for everything else. In the end, there were no open doors left. Accepting this was excruciating. Politically it was all downside. It remains the most difficult and uncomfortable policy position I have ever taken. But today, more than a decade later, I still feel the same way. That doesn't eliminate the real problems with nuclear energy. But they have to be viewed in context. It is much easier to have those concerns dominate our policy since they are immediate, and the dire consequences that are the focus of this paper may be decades away. My responsibility is to today, of course, but it is even stronger to those who have not lived the half century I have enjoyed. A policy that disregards the viability of our descendants is a policy of no moral value. This looking beyond ourselves is part of the return to purpose. Further, it should be noted that the greenhouse effect is a compelling argument by itself for nuclear power. If the buildup of carbon dioxide is indeed a threat to the world's climate, then an energy source which produces no carbon dioxide should have some currency. This is an extremely difficult divide for environmentalists to cross. But the debate has begun. It's a matter of evaluating risks. The risk of a nuclear accident is quite knowable. The risk of rising oceans has never been experienced and thus elicits no strong fears. But one can begin to imagine the dimensions of such a calamity. For me I choose to take the greenhouse effect very seriously. I hope I'm wrong. Finally, it is interesting to see how differently governments have treated this issue of nuclear power. France is a country ruled by the liberal Socialist Party yet is driving toward virtually full dependence upon nuclear power. They see it as freedom from oil dependence and an end to the financial hemorrhaging of that dependence. Japan and South Korea are strong adherents of nuclear as their electricity producer. Germany is ruled by the conservative Christan Democrats yet has closed off the nuclear option. Others have as well. In the long run which countries will benefit? In my mind, the French have done the most to secure their energy future. They have decided upon a course which if followed by other nations will render the Persian Gulf less critical and thereby less likely to result in the kind of dilemma we now face there. It will result in less oil demand,  Page 45 thereby reducing world oil prices and thus lessening the dollars spent on such oil. Finally, and most importantly, it results in oil never being consumed as nuclear plants take the place of oil-fired units. The savings herein are staggering. Oil Imports in 1989 accounted for $45 billion of our $109 billion trade deficit. The 112 nuclear plants operating that year in the U.S. saved 740,000 barrels of oil per day. That cut our 1989 oil import bill by $4.7 billion or about 10%. Since 1973, nuclear plants have reduced our trade deficit by a total of $125 billion. As oil prices increase over time the trade deficit reduction potential of nuclear power will only increase. These are enormous economic factors which cannot and should not be brushed aside, especially by a nation with chronic and massive trade deficits, more than one third of which is strictly due to oil imports. There are, however, two valid arguments against nuclear power. First, it is just another avenue to avoid the conservation and renewable policies that must come first. True. Any nuclear option must follow conservation and renewables. Any attempt to move to nuclear without recognizing this maxim is properly doomed to failure. This reality has been told to the nuclear industry for years but has had no impact as they continue to view nuclear development as a sainted option and conservation and renewables as latter-day appeasement of wooly headed environmentalists. This attitude has served them very poorly indeed. Secondly, the technologies appropriate for the future are not in place. There is merit to this argument. The American nuclear industry consists of scores of nuclear power plants, virtually all of which are different from one another. The inefficiencies and hazards of this reality are not to be taken lightly. If every nuclear power plant is custom-made there will always be problems since every plant has its own distinct learning curve. The nuclear industry and the utilities have been foolish in ignoring these legitimate criticisms. They refused to rethink how the nuclear option could be perfected and instead chose to defend and perpetuate past practices. They gave opponents no reason to hope that critical self-analysis was possible. As a result, today the industry lies in disarray. The new nuclear age will require technologies in nuclear fission which allow for smaller, safer, modular power plants in limited design options. Knowledge will have to be transferrable so that talented personnel will be transferrable. There will not be any more 1200 megawatt power plants. They are too costly and no utility in this day and age is going to take the risk of building one. Nor should they. In this case, smaller is indeed better. The future is in the 300-500 megawatt range. What about cost? They will be expensive but the case for nuclear is not its cost. It is preserving fossil fuels, lessening the hazards of oil dependence, reducing the trade deficit and minimizing carbon dioxide output. The federal government is going to have to invest in developing these new prototypes in concert with industry. There must be a sharing of the financial risk in order to move rapidly. This joint venture would seek the development of two or three prototype models based on today's design and engineering capability rather than attempt to add bells and whistles onto twenty to thirty year old blueprints.  Page 46 What about the disposal of nuclear wastes? This is not a simple matter since we are talking about materials that will long outlive us. But the problem already exists. It exists outside the nuclear power industry because of military uses primarily, but also research and medical applications as well. Given the choice of finding a technological solution to limited amounts of nuclear waste and finding a technological solution to massive quantities of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, I will choose the former. Not because its easy but because the latter is undoable. But the fact remains that the disposal issue has been brushed aside. To advocate for nuclear must be to commit upfront to the funding necessary to secure the disposal option. Neither the nuclear industry nor the federal government has chosen to face up to this. Until a disposal option is identified and accepted, we will always be at a standstill. What about the concern for future generations if we leave this nuclear waste behind? This is a serious argument. But again a choice. Nuclear waste stored in deep salt mines versus a world in conflict over diminishing fossil fuels. Once more I choose the former. Not because it's easy but because the consequences of the latter are all too knowable. The research community must also be funded to develop non-fission alternatives. There are compelling reasons to push aggressively for fusion options (or others not now known) that may be much safer and more inexhaustible. We are talking about an availability that stretches well into the 21st century. But that is when its need will be most critical. This must be a kind of mini-Manhattan Project of the future. A nuclear source that can never turn into a Chernobyl. A nuclear source that can light the darkness for those who come generations later without the dilemma of waste disposal. This is the necessary technology for us to develop in order to secure our safety and our descendants' safety. Finally, it should be noted that there are other serious economic consequences of the United States losing its technological edge in nuclear power. If we let our capability wither, as we are now doing, sooner or later there will not be an American company able to build a nuclear power plant. All of the know-how will be Japanese or French or whatever. And when the world recognizes the need for non-fossil fuel base-load generation and turns to nuclear we will again have lost our competitive position. The trade implications of this are obvious. But it also means loss of U.S. influence on issues such as safety design and waste disposal. The role of the federal government is critical here because only it can take the steps necessary to coordinate the emergence of the new nuclear power option. The President and Congress must jointly agree as to the necessity for this option and then provide the leadership to work with industry to make it happen. This will involve issues such as funding, regulation and site selection. Fossil Fuels People who don't like to contemplate the nuclear option will want to take refuge in the notion that we can always go back to finding more fossil fuels.  Page 47 People who dismiss conservation and renewables will do the same. Let's go out and extract more oil and gas. This is, in essence, the current policy. The scarcity of oil reserves contrasts with the more plentiful reserves of gas in North America so the two are not to be seen as identical. But the prime weakness here is the obvious - the more we find and extract, the less there will be. We obviously do need a vibrant oil and gas drilling and production capability. For the next few decades this capacity is absolutely essential. But beyond the available U.S. oil reserves, particularly in the Southwestern states, the options are less attractive. Take the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. There are two possible approaches. First, go in, exploit it and secure the several months at most supply said to possibly exist there. Whatever environmental damage occurs, that is just the price that has to be paid. Second, keep the oil in the ground, preserve the environment and treat that oil (if it exists) as available to future generations whose need will be much more acute than ours. Obviously, the first approach offers greater current political advantage. The second, however, offers greater fulfillment to the generational responsibility. Guess which one George Bush chose? But the second also offers strategic value as well. As we face future crisis after future crisis occasioned by our dependence upon foreign oil, are we not better positioned if we have put into place alternatives and conservation and have the maximum amount of fossil fuels still in the ground? Put another way, does not a Drain America First approach maximize our vulnerability? But beyond these arguments, the Bush proposal to open up the Artic Wildlife Refuge bespeaks of how much our oil addiction has diminished all our other values. Alaska is not just another place. It is the most beautiful and most preserved land on earth. It is, by far, the grandest gesture we have made in deference to God's wondrous creation. To seek to put the wildlife refuge at risk while balking at a gasoline tax to achieve the same net result is hypocrisy in the extreme for someone who talked about wanting to be the environmental president. The Democrats in 1992 should commit to veto any effort to despoil this part of Alaska as a substitute for an inevitable energy policy. In many respects, this issue is a "defining moment" for our values as keepers of the land, protectors of nature's wildlife and guardians of the energy needs of our descendents. But even in the lower forty-eight states, the concern is where the fossil fuels will come from. Once the relatively easy oil and gas reserves are tapped you begin to get into some pretty dicey alternatives. Drilling a hole to extract oil is one thing. Crushing a mountain to extract oil shale is quite another. Drilling a hole to extract gas is one thing. Mining arid regions of the country for coal is quite another.  Page 48 This is not to argue against fossil fuel development. That will happen and should happen in the decades of transition. Indeed, the nation is looking to natural gas to step in and substitute for oil in ways unexpected just a few years ago. This, combined with the development of ethanol, methanol and other alternative fuels, offers real time hope of lessening our Persian Gulf addiction. However, the fact remains that the conservation/renewables/nuclear options should be put at the head of the energy line. Only by doing that can we contemplate the wonders of grandchildren and great grandchildren without the burden of knowing we have sacrificed them for our own comfort and convenience.  Page 49 V. Foreign Policy - Time to Heal Thyself Since the end of World War II the United States has held the Soviet Union at bay. The policy was called containment. It was a test of American resolve and determination that has extended for more than four decades. Today we have witnessed the triumph of that policy. By containing communism, we allowed its inherent contradictions to eventually cause its downfall. Communism did not fall to invading armies or to an onslaught of nuclear warheads. Its demise was the result of two internal phenomena. First, the sense of injustice which fueled Marxist-Leninism soon gave way to police states wherever communism was dominant. Freedom was the first casualty of this "worker's paradise." Anyone crossing through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin could not avoid the heavy sense of oppression that characterized all of Eastern Europe. Second, the allure of communism as a cureall for the ills of capitalism came apart as more and more countries found that communism equalled petty corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency and economic stagnation. A system based on the theory of noble common interest faltered upon the reality that human beings need incentives that relate to themselves and their families. There must be a causal relationship between hard work and reward if there is to be hard work. Communism as an economic system destroyed that relationship. The result was thus inevitable. This inevitability, however, required time to manifest itself. It was containment that bought that time. The price paid by America (and its allies to a much lesser extent) was enormous. Thousands of lives were given to protect freedom and trillions of dollars were expended as well. But the wisdom of Harry Truman has been borne out by history. Contain communism. Believe in the fundamental superiority of democracy and the free enterprise system. Hold fast and eventually people's yearning to be free and to provide their families with a decent standard of living will prevail. He was right. It took an awfully long time but it was accomplished without one nuclear warhead being fired in anger. The collapse of the Berlin Wall brought the Cold War to an end. It will take a decade to mop up the remains but they will be mopped up. There will undoubtedly be setbacks as the Soviet Union suffers through the terrible throes of transition. Even if there were to be a new rightist regime in Moscow, it would be unlike the Soviet Union of the past forty-five years. The reason is quite simple. The Warsaw Pact is gone forever. The fearsome armies of East Germany are now but memories as the Germanys have united in an emotional embrace that has turned the faces of the East Germans toward the West. Elsewhere throughout the Warsaw Pact, playwrights and union leaders have become heads of state and freedom is savored as only it can be tasted by the formerly enslaved.  Page 50 Within the Soviet Union as well the question is not one of a possible Warsaw Pact army moving westward across Europe. The question is whether various republics will remain as part of the Soviet Union. And the answer is almost assuredly not. There will be new nations based on old identities. Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia are but the beginning of a long debate over what constitutes a viable national state that can endure. And, finally, even within core Russia, the forces of freedom and self-expression have been loosened. Each day adds to the deeper rooting of expectations. The traditions of parliamentary debate, of open citizen criticism, of religious observance, of free market experimentation are all quite fragile. But they now exist in the minds of the Soviet people reinforced by images of the rampant freedom being experienced by their fellow citizens in Eastern Europe. This is the joy of a great emancipation. But this is the honeymoon. More difficult days will follow as the harsh realities of transition set in. This is not a transition to be marked in months or years. It will take decades. And the long road will provide endless opportunities for demagogues to stake their claim to leadership. The sheer amount of dashed expectations will create mountains of bitterness and resentment as the coming economic dislocations set in. Freedom is lovely. But chaos is frightening. And sooner or later there will be those who will take advantage of the deep instinctive fear of public disorder. One must understand that the alternative to Mikhail Gorbachev is not just Boris Yeltsin. It is the hardline military conservatives as well. The 1990's will see events in the Soviet Union (and Eastern Europe) which will not be pretty. It is essential here to understand two fundamental points. First, a Soviet Union in transition will always pose a certain danger to us but that danger is not the risk of advancing Warsaw Pact armies preceding a carefully planned nuclear attack. It is the danger of an unstable leadership which happens to be well armed. It is the danger, not of miscalculation, but unbalanced desperation. As long as nuclear weapons exist in such vast numbers they cannot be allowed to drift from our consciousness. Second, it is in everyone's interest to make the Soviet transition as smooth as possible. The less the economic chaos, the less will be the risk of political extremism. The Western nations must help demonstrate to the Soviet people that there is a light at the end of the democratic tunnel. Economic deprivation makes freedom less relevant to a people. We must ensure that economic hope is not extinguished within the minds of the Soviet citizenry. This means a coalition of North American, EEC and Pacific Rim nations meeting at an economic summit with the Soviets (and the East Europeans) and hammering out Marshall Plan II. This will be a Marshall Plan not to contain communism but to keep it in its grave (the hard view) or to enable a long suffering people to enjoy the fruits of freedom at long last (the benign view). Instead of arraying our forces of war against the East, let us demonstrate the genius of democracy by unleashing the true generosity inherent in free nations. This generosity will involve the usual forms of assistance but it must include as well the transfer of knowledge. The task here is to bring  Page 51 into being the organizational infrastructure necessary for economic reforms to succeed. This is not just a matter of letters of credit or food aid. It is fundamentally a matter of providing skills and experience and management. These are human talents that can only be transferred by other human beings. It obviously involves the deployment of various Western corporate and academic entities. But it also means Western experts such as retired business executives and consultants on leave devoting themselves to the great task of the 1990's and beyond - the full integration of the former Warsaw Pact into the commonwealth of nations. Such an integration will also enable us to have a greater capability to influence the outcome of the independence movements in the republics. Finally, a thought about how we have been affected by our relationship with this great Asian continental nation. Both the USSR and the United States spent the latter part of this century preparing for war against each other. This constant tension gave us our worst risk of loss of civil liberties (McCarthyism), our closest brush with annihilation (Cuban Missile Crisis) and our most bitter foreign involvement (Vietnam). All those are past. What is not is the economic price that both countries have paid. We are both like muscle bound weight lifters who now have little use for all the accumulated intercontinental muscle. The contest now is not weight lifting but long distance running. All around are the smaller, quicker nations who devoted themselves to business while we were both focused on confrontation. As one observer has noted "the Cold War is over and the Japanese won." Both the United States and the Soviet Union need to ramp down their military machines to levels that provide true military security without rendering them economically impotent. There will be a lot of sorting out as we seek to find the appropriate level. I would opt to reduce our troop commitments overseas and retain the research and development capabilities. There is no military might in a nation impoverished by an inability to compete in the global marketplace. There is no sustainable military might when the national economy is in decline. This must be the most significant underpinning of the New American Mandate. The Soviets face that reality now. But we face it also. The New World Order Harken a new chapter of world peace and harmony? Sadly not. But one must rejoice about the passing of the spectre of the superpowers having at each other in a fit of nuclear miscalculation. We have been delivered from the immediate threat of nuclear winter. This deliverance, however, has given center stage to other destructive forces as we have now witnessed in the extreme. They are not the aftermath of the East-West confrontation. They are local; they are regional; they are linguistic; they are religious; they are ethnic; they are economic; they are tribal. The world seems capable of offering up an endless array of bloody incidents on virtually every continent. The Persian Gulf has our attention but it is only the latest crisis. El Salvador, Ghana,  Page 52 Rumania, Argentina, South Africa, China, Panama, Liberia, Kuwait, India, East Timor, Haiti, Afghanistan, Phillipines, on and on. A year from now there will be others. The overlay of East versus West, of conflict based on capitalism versus Marxist-Leninism, is gone. That context hid other determining forces that are now free to roam at will across the landscape of the lesser developed world. Many of these countries are not rooted in centuries of jurisprudence and democratic institutions. For some of them, their history as a country is measured only in post World War II terms. Many of the boundaries of these countries were artificially determined by outsiders to accommodate foreign agendas. Often those boundaries cut across natural groupings or put historically rival groupings in the same nation. Creating a nation requires a great deal more than geography. There must be a sense of people, a sense of common history. Many of today's nations lack these essential attributes. They are square pegs trying to fit into round holes carved by others. For some, the future cannot hold as tribal or ethnic or religious rivalries come roaring back from their bloody pasts. Added to this basic disequilibrium is the communications technology available worldwide which has raised expectations concerning freedom, standards of living, health care and the like. Many of these expectations will not be met. Thus, we have a world where possible mass annihilation by nuclear warheads has given way to continuous individual and small group death by machetes, AK-47's and tanks. What does the United States do in these situations? The End of Pax Americana It is clear that we cannot intercede in every case where clashes have broken out. Most of these conflicts are going to involve the loss of innocent life and the temptation is going to be to go in and somehow make things all right. That temptation is a snare and must be resisted. There is going to be a lot of sorting out in the years ahead as groups go against groups in countries where the institutional bonds are weaker than the bonds of ethnicity or religion. And often they are weaker than the acute remembrance of past injustices. Horrid affairs will take place and we must try to contribute to their prevention as much as possible. But no American blood should be casually spilled taking sides in the internal affairs of woeful nations. Our good offices, yes, but not our blood. The threshhold of American involvement must be raised to a level consistent with clear national interests that are embraced by the American people. A clear example of this is Lebanon. In 1982 I stood on the balcony of the American ambassador's residence in East Beirut and watched Israeli planes bombing PLO positions in West Beirut. The night sky was illuminated with flares. Nearby Christian gun positions would occasionally fire in the direction of Moslem-held West Beirut. The scene below me was so different from anything I had ever seen before that it required an effort to believe that it was real and that people were dying in buildings I could barely discern. It was a scene out of Dante's inferno.  Page 53 The natural instinct was to somehow intervene to end the bloodshed. But when I met with leaders from the various factions during my stay it was clear that ethnic and religious differences combined with past horrors were beyond any rational arbitration. There were forces at play that were primal and they would not be easily contained. Not by us, not by any western nation. Perhaps not even by any nation. Today, almost a decade later, there still is not peace. A more difficult situation arises where borders are at stake. Herein there are other considerations that come into play - considerations that speak to the essential concepts of national sovereignty and non-aggression. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait is such an example. It had to be addressed. In most instances the United States will not have great national interests at stake. In some cases, such as the Persian Gulf, the American dependence on imported oil raises the stakes considerably. Our economic vital interests, caused by our almost twenty year failure to bring about energy self-sufficiency, will continue to make us vulnerable to whatever winds blow in that part of the world. We cannot, however, allow ourselves to continually become the policeman of the world sending our youth to areas of great risk and pouring our national treasure into the fray. There must be a police force in future instances but we should only be part of the contingent. We must not be the whole contingent or even the majority of the contingent. Efforts are going to have to be made to provide a United Nations Security Force with real teeth. This will not happen overnight and there are years of negotiations ahead to make it a reality. But one thing is for sure. America no longer can afford the role it has assumed since the end of World War II. Pax Americana must give way to Heal Thyself. This is not isolationism. It is participation in a new internationalism truly based on the principle of collective security. This principle has been articulated for decades but remains in the realm of rhetoric not reality. The United States must cause it to become the basis for a new Pax Mundi. True collective security means true collective burden sharing. The effort in the Persian Gulf is a step in that direction but the journey is by no means complete. Other nations, especially those with great trade surpluses, have enjoyed a free ride as we willingly take up causes around the world. American blood is shed and we spend billions upon billions of dollars that should be spent at home to reinvigorate our economically depleted nation. We are seen as willing to fight battles for everyone else and rarely insistent that other nations truly participate up to their proportionate share. The attitude used to be that we would never really push other nations on these kind of issues so long as they were strong allies in confronting the Soviets. Those days are over. There is a new world order, but we don't truly act that way. We need our resources at home. We have a Herculean task to steady our economic ship of state and to get out from under our crushing national debt. This is the first priority and all the other priorities come after it. Indeed, if we don't attend to our economic peril, we won't be in a position to be of help to anyone.  Page 54 The time has come to confront our allies with tough choices. Either they have interests at stake here or they don't. If they do, then they must either participate fully or be prepared to see those interests adversely affected. This new order will come hard to countries who have prospered under our military umbrella and devoted their resources to build mighty economies. For them, the message must be that the party is over. We have suffered our Vietnam. We have seen our Marines killed in Beirut. Our troops in Saudi Arabia are the majority force that contained the madness of Saddam Hussein, while not one Japanese or German life was at risk. Yet Japan is the most dependent upon Persian Gulf oil of all the industrialized nations in the world. They had enormous economic interests at stake. Yet the Japanese say that their constitution, unfortunately, prevents their involvement. The Germans sold all kinds of weaponry to Iraq including those necessary for chemical warfare. They even sold goods to Iraq after the embargo had been imposed. Rather than participate with other Europeans, however, the Bonn government chose to play the role of bystander. The Germans say that they want to devote their resources to reincorporating East Germany. We should say enough! They have vital interests here. They cannot be allowed to obviate their clear responsibilities by hesitantly providing contributory funds under duress. They are doing only what they have to in order to quell American public outrage. There will not be a new world order until and unless other major countries are prepared to invest the blood of their sons and daughters and the wealth of their treasuries in the duties of the peacekeeper. Our actions must force this new world order. We must not delay it by pretending we have unlimited young soldiers and unlimited resources to spend all over the world. There are three choices before us: 1. Allow military agression across borders to go unchecked. 2. Deploy American troops, alone if necessary, as each new world trouble spot erupts. 3. Put into place the new world order of multi-national peacekeeping where the United States is a major player but only in reasonable proportion to its allies. Option #1 will lead to world chaos. There is no viable recourse for America that removes us from the responsibilities of a great global nation. Our military strength and our democratic values are world resources. The issue is not whether to be involved but how to be involved. To some Americans the temptation is to embrace a kind of latter day isolationism. But it will never be. We are the hub around which allied democratic nations revolve. That reality cannot be ignored. Iraq could not have been allowed to conquer Kuwait with impunity.  Page 55 Option #2 will bankrupt America and cause undue personal grief to the families of our servicemen and women. This is the policy that our allies desperately wish us to continue. They must be made to understand that an economically crippled and divided America serves no one's interest over the long term. Japan and Germany are not safer with an America in economic receivership. It is truly galling that these nations have managed to secure the safety of their youth while their interests were defended by American men and women. Option #3 must be the basis of our foreign policy. Only Pax Mundi can call upon American military resources in a manner consistent with our prevailing national needs. We are but five percent of the world's population. We are the greatest debtor nation the world has ever known. We suffered about 60% of the coalition casualties in the Persian Gulf. These are facts. Let's have a foreign policy that recognizes these facts and establishes the new world order in practice as well as in theory. We may be the most important policeman in the international police force and we can accept that. But we should never allow ourselves to become the latter day paid soldiers for nations who feel no moral obligation to sacrifice their own citizens. The Third World There is a pattern to our travails abroad. When it comes to dealing with a superpower we are reasonably comfortable that we know our enemy. The Russians have been more European than not in their 20th century history and mannerisms. We have a good sense of how they think and what motivates them. The same is true with our NATO allies and the Warsaw Pact nations. East-West we know. All of our decision makers were groomed in the school of East-West relations. It is where we have the "touch" that allows policies to have some hope of success. By contrast virtually none of our leaders came of age in the North-South context. They then must rely on position papers prepared by others unaided by their own personal "feel" for such matters. The Third World is very different. And we don't truly understand it. In Vietnam we imposed an East-West overlay on the Third World. It was assumed that ideological dynamics were the same everywhere. The domino theory drove our decisions there but Vietnam fell and the predicted onrush of Communist triumphs around the world never materialized. What happened? Who knows? No one ever felt it was important enough to hold Congressional hearings on the reason why the conceptual centerpiece of our rationale turned out to be in error. The war was over and no one had the stomach to try and figure out how the best and brightest could not understand what was happening inside the minds of friends and foe alike. An unhappy chapter. So much sacrifice. Let's put it behind us. It was just too painful. We never tried to figure out what we didn't know. Many hotspots of the future will be in the Third World. These potential conflicts will arise most probably over resource questions or attempts to "remedy" colonially-imposed, artificial borders. How can we deal with these as they come upon us? The resolution of these potential  Page 56 crises cannot be endless military engagement. There are just too many disputed borders, ethnic rivalries and unbalanced heads of state. These non-U.S.-Soviet confrontations must be the business of the world community but there is a limit to the capacity and willingness of countries to be militarily involved. These confrontations call for a new commitment to the rule of law in conflict mediation. Such mediation should be by entities that are perceived to be as third world in their composition as reasonably possible. This means the strengthening of existing multilateral institutions. It means the creation of new mechanisms with sufficient muscle to enforce the principle of peaceful resolution of disputes. The old adage of speak softly and carry a big stick remains relevant today. When territorial and/or resource disputes do arise, such disputes should be forced into binding and timely international arbitration. The objective here is to create a moral and legal process that is created by the entire world community and not by the usual Western players alone. If the dispute is not resolved satisfactorily, the World Court should be given in reality what it has only been given in theory throughout the Cold War era, namely the power to adjudicate the remedy. Should a potential aggressor refuse to seek a remedy through binding arbitration or the World Court, or ignore the ruling of such bodies, then economic sanctions as the primary enforcement tool should be implemented swiftly and completely. And they should be kept in place until shown to be inadequate. The world community has demonstrated that strict sanctions can be implemented effectively, witness the global response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Should sanctions fail the capability must exist to exercise the military option under United Nations auspices. Herein it is essential that any future military actions clearly have the appearance and substance of United Nations supervision. This will require a great deal of rethinking because the current United Nations peacekeeping structure would not have been able to counter Saddam Hussein in time to prevent his possible invasion of Saudi Arabia, let alone evict him from Kuwait. The world's nations are going to have to sit down and decide how to give the United Nations effective military capability consistent with the concept of national sovereignty. It will require extensive negotiations obviously. But the world will be better served if the Saddam Hussein wannabes of the future have less room to miscalculate world reaction to unacceptable endeavors. And we in the West will be better served if such military responses are not perceived by third world peoples as Western actions against non-Westerners. Finally, it's urgent that we spend the time necessary to understand how Third World nations think. They are not mini copies of Western nations. They are different peoples with different cultures - cultures no less worthy of our respect and understanding. They all need to be thought of as separate and sovereign. If we can do this we can avoid some of the quagmires that we have experienced in the past.  Page 57 The nations of the Third World have a vastly different perspective than we do. Some are consumed with fears and resentments about the former colonial powers. Some have an inherent uneasiness with nations that are mostly white and Western. Many of them deal from feelings of insecurity and non-acceptance. They don't act as we in the West would expect because their cultures and histories and institutions are not the same as ours. Fundamentally, many of them do not believe that we respect them. And, sadly, they are often correct. We think that human history and the Judeo-Christian tradition are the same thing. Perhaps we can see how offensive that is to the billions of people who don't share that tradition. The Persian Gulf war has demonstrated this dilemma. Saddam Hussein was able to tap into reserves of sympathy in the Moslem world when the bombing of Iraq occurred. This despite the obvious lawlessness and brutality of his invasion of Kuwait. How could these people support such a dictator who had savagely killed other Arab people? The answer lies not in rationality but in the perception that this was Iraq versus the United States and a handful of Western allies. It is said that war is politics by other means. True. Future military actions must carefully calibrate the long term political implications of our strategic decision making. It is in the self-interest of the United States to encourage our colleges and universities to focus more effort on the history and mores of non-Western cultures. We need to understand the thinking of Islam. We need to know the legacy of American involvement with regimes in Latin America. We need to be aware of the many cultures that determine the thinking of Asian and African nations just as thoroughly as they seek to understand the West. We cannot presume that the rest of the world thinks that way we do. There are powerful factors at work that cause nations and peoples to have particular lenses through which they view events around them. While this may sound self-evident I can attest to how easy it is not to see it. I vividly recall how much my perspective changed during my two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia. I lived in a town/village called Wolisso and taught in the local school. In the summer between school years I remained in Wolisso to work on a building project. For that period of time I was the only Peace Corps Volunteer there. I found myself beginning to think like an Ethiopian for the first time. I also found myself looking at non-Ethiopians through Ethiopian eyes. Since Wolisso was on the road from the capital city of Addis Ababa to the provincial capital of Jimma there was occasional traffic through the town. Often they came at dangerously high speeds given the fact that the road was usually full of people, including children, and various kinds of livestock. One day, while walking along the road towards the building site, I had to jump off of the side of the road as a car barrelled past. The driver of the large car was an Ethiopian. My reaction and that of the Ethiopians near me was clear irritation. Another arrogant upper-class Ethiopian. But it was soon dismissed as how things unfortunately were.  Page 58 Just as we had returned to the road to continue on our way, another car came at us at a similarly irresponsible speed. Again, we all had to jump into the shallow gully at the side of the road. As the car sped by with the horn blaring we all noticed that the driver was white - either an American or a European. My reaction was not merely irritation but anger. Real anger. I wanted to chase after the culprit and pummel him. The Ethiopians responded even more strongly. They began to shout to each other about the cursed "ferengi" (foreigner). Both drivers had committed the same act. Both had jeopardized the same people. But there the sameness ended. History and perception and culture and nationalism came into play and caused the reaction of the Ethiopians to each miscreant to be radically different. Even I was rendering separate judgments. In the year that followed, I became acutely aware of this dichotomy and had no difficulty in seeing it in other circumstances. It serves no purpose to argue that all of this is illogical. Logic and politics are not the same thing. And if we are going to be players in the non-Western world, we'd better understand the hearts and minds of its people. But recourse to isolationism is not possible. It is inevitable that we will be involved in other Third World crises after Kuwait. It is then imperative that such involvements only occur based on a true understanding of the political and cultural forces at play and not just an assessment of military capabilities. The evolution to Pax Mundi is going to require a great deal more knowledge than we now have. We are always going to be a major player on the world scene, perhaps the dominant player. With American lives at risk, we have the moral duty to know what we are getting into.  Page 59 VI. The Culture of America: The Essential Need Much of what has been written herein deals with policies and rationalities. I have attempted to analyze issues as objectively as possible and to put forth real world solutions. The effort has been to cast off excessive dogma and to confront what is coldly before us. For some, this paper should now end at Chapter V. What follows will seem somewhat ephemeral compared to the previous chapters. It will deal in matters less concrete but, to me, at least as relevant. It is the realm that has been mostly ignored just because it doesn't lend itself to hard data or legislative initiatives or regulatory changes. But there is more to America's renewal than policies and programs and realities. There is also the wondrous matter of human will. And there is the wondrous matter of societal cohesion. There is no rational explanation for excellence and achievement if one depends only upon predictions based on quantitative data. Potential is not performance. Capacity is not output. There is a much deeper dimension. That dimension is the will of particular human beings to excel. It is their unrelenting drive to reach beyond. That dimension is also the capacity of a people to act in united purpose and to achieve greatness by reasons of their cohesion. Where do these characteristics come from? Why do some individuals and some peoples have them despite serious shortcomings and others not have them despite every advantage? How do you foster them? How do you extend them throughout a society? How do you cause a society to properly value them? I believe that the single greatest determinant of human will and societal cohesion is the culture that embraces and sustains a people. Culture is what gives us lift and what, in its absence, can render us pitiable. To be part of a culture is to be truly blessed. It provides a sense of lineage - a knowing that one is part of something that reaches far into the past, a reassurance that one is part of a continuum, a strength that comes from bonding with one's ancestors as well as with one's contemporaries. One is never alone because one is woven into a larger fabric with other people and with shared values. Not to be part of a culture is a curse. There is only the present, only the temporal. Values and morals are ad hoc, a sorting out on a day-to-day basis. There is no spiritual frame of reference. One floats through life in search of a sense of a larger belonging that, if found, is merely grafted on, not brought up from within. The great nations of history have many differences. But they have one commonality - strong, vibrant, inclusive cultures. So it is with any human grouping. It is true for families, providing its members with a capacity to begin to answer the inevitable inquiry "Who am I?"  Page 60 The mere grouping of individuals does not, by itself, make a family. There must be a strong sense of mutual concern and a common purpose. Correspondingly, the mere grouping of multitudes does not, by itself, make a nation. There must be the glue that holds these multitudes firmly in a common embrace. There must be a culture that speaks to the people. Occasionally individuals not blessed with a coherent culture will rise above their circumstances and achieve greatness. Nations never do. A nation's fate is inescapably a function of the strength of its culture. History certainly shows us that. Coherent binding cultures create great nations for good or for ill. Centrifugal national cultures create dissolution and disarray, always for ill. Why does history record great advances by a people in a particular era and no advances by a different people in precisely the same era? Why do a people advance in one time period and then seem to regress in another? The answer does not lie in factors like natural resources, geography or political systems alone. Often, the difference is culture. Will, discipline, dedication, commitment, patriotism, togetherness, caring, reaching out - these are the manifestations of a culture. How one defines culture is, of course, an endless debate. For me, it involves the values that emerge in the person. It defines what constitutes a life of worth and what constitutes one's obligations beyond self. It involves the sense of being part of a clearly defined society which readily accepts you and whose mores you honor deeply. It demands that we view our fellow countrymen as brothers and sisters whose condition and fate is of true importance to us. It is the fusion of scores of different ethnic lineages into a vibrant continental nation. It is E Pluribus Unum. Not only in legal and constitutional terms but in the truest sense of a people bonded together. The role of the New American Mandate is to strengthen our commonality. We have to mold our many diverse cultures here in America into a more cohesive "national family" where the emphasis is put on such intangibles as self-esteem, inclusion, work ethic, education, pride in quality products, commitment to learning, caring for each other. We have to talk about and debate and ponder how we can reinforce the cohesiveness that connects us to each other and reinforces our sense of attachment. We must understand the constant need to nurture community. For it is this community which allows us to share goals. And it enables us to sense collective danger and to respond to that danger as a whole people. To compete with societies with strong cultures requires an equally strong culture. It's that simple. This is not commonality for the sake of commonality. It's knowing that while commonality is critical in creating a noble society, it is, more importantly, the sine qua non of having a viable economic future. It is the necessary prerequisite.  Page 61 There are many parts to this discussion. What follows are examples of an attitude. The fundamental point here, however, is straightforward. Our leaders, both public and private, must, above all, commit to strengthening our national culture and to make mighty the spiritual bonds that make us a people. Minorities - Racial, Ethnic, Religious, Economic Whose country is this anyway? Whose history is it? Are the founding fathers the ancestors of all of us? Or just some of us? When a young black child sees a picture of George Washington, what are the feelings compared to when he sees a picture of Martin Luther King? Does a child of Greek immigrants feel more connected to Thomas Paine or to Aristotle? Do Cambodian refugees from the killing fields feel true kinship with 18th century Yankee farmers? Does an American Jew at worship feel more linked to the Puritans or to those who suffered in the Holocaust? How does a Mexican-American sort out his feelings about the Alamo? And do Native Americans really think that the history of America began with Christopher Columbus? We are a diverse people. Unlike many other countries, our national history and most of our family histories do not coincide. Some Americans are descendents of those who crossed the Bering land mass. Others arrived yesterday by jet from Bulgaria. As we trace our national history most of us come to a time when our families were not here. They were part of the history of another place. So which history is relevant? Both? Only one? If only one, which one? The magical bond created by hundreds, even thousands, of years of one people in one place is not available to us. Our history is much shorter. Our family roots spread out all over the world. We must work resolutely at nurturing cultural cohesiveness because it is not given to us in the same fashion that it has been given to some others. The absence of such cohesiveness is alienation. Many of our people sense an otherness. They sense that there is an inner circle in America and they are not part of it. The problem is not statutory. We have passed the appropriate laws. The obstacles are not institutional. Most companies and institutions actively seek diversity in the work force. The obstacles are less tangible. They exist in the minds of both the established and the disestablished. It is very powerful for something so subtle. The laws and the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution opened the gates to a glorious land of equal opportunity. But nirvana remains elusive. Equal opportunity, we have learned, is more than an open gate. It is the appropriate complement of skills and fundamental self-esteem that makes the open gate meaningful. To just open the gate is to engage in cruel gesture no matter how innocently it is done.  Page 62 The nation must address the non-statutory needs of our fellow countrymen and countrywomen. It's not just money. It's creating a culture of true inclusivity. It's sending out the message that we will go out of our way to make sure that skills and self-esteem are part of the package. Not just government programs. It's one-on-one, human being to human being, volunteerism and private institutional outreach. Mentoring in the public schools as described earlier is an example but it's more than that. It is a way of thinking. It's white, male America truly pondering what its like to be a woman or a person of color and trying to break through to acceptance. It's recognizing that the presumptions of equal opportunity taken for granted by well-educated and affluent white males are not possible for those who every day cannot rest in the assurance that they are automatically esteemed. That esteem must be established. If it is not, we will always have a lesser society. We will also always have an underclass. And it will be increasingly alienated. It will be an unending source of violence to itself and to others. And it will serve as a monstrously heavy burden on our society as we seek to compete with societies free of such inner turmoil. Indeed, it will preclude any hope of competing successfully. Diversity - The Wonders and The Limits There is no more perfect American portrait than a schoolyard of children of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. It is the vision, the inspiration of what America can be. A diverse America in harmony with itself is equipped to be the greatest social and economic nation on this multicultural planet. The national discussion about diversity has included its glorification and its damnation. Some see it as a Godsend, some see it as the devil's work. The challenge here is to understand that diversity gives us composite strength, but that strength can only exist within a commonality that holds us together. I believe there are unavoidable components to that commonality. First is language. An America with scores of different languages is truly rich in its texture. In a multilingual world such fluency is not only charming, it is also an enormous advantage. The appreciation of other languages, particularly those spoken by significant numbers of immigrants in the locality should be part of the curriculum at the earliest grades in our schools. All this, however, must rest upon one, and only one, foundation - English. As the language of the vast majority of our citizens, as the language of assimilation for millions of our immigrants, as the language of our government and commerce, English is, and must remain, the core language of America. Had history been different there might have been a different language that would have united us. But our history is our history. And English is the only possible common tongue at this point of our national life. This is not to argue for the superiority of  Page 63 English but for the reality of it. Well-intentioned efforts to provide pockets of other language existence is to doom those pockets to be forever outside the commonality of America. A nation based on more than one language will always be inherently in tension. This is obviously true around the world where language differences that coincide with ethnic or racial differences are breeding grounds for never ending violence. But it is also true where language divides societies which seem on the surface to be rock solid. Witness today's non-violent but separatist debate by the Province of Quebec in Canada. It poses great risk to an otherwise very cohesive nation. Children who do not speak English at home must be brought to English proficiency as rapidly as possible. Due respect should be paid to their native tongue. Efforts should be made to provide adequate transition time. But the message must be unmistakable that in order to make American culture cohesive and all-inclusive America must be English-speaking at its core. We want you to join us in that commonality and we will help you achieve proficiency. Linguistic diversity is a strength. A Tower of Babel is a crippling weakness. We must know where the former ends and the latter begins. The second component of our commonality is education. As stated earlier, it has always been America's great equalizer. But this road to opportunity has not been uniformly embraced by various groups. Education is truly honored in some groups - from the early Yankee settlers to the Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century to today's Asian newcomers. The pursuit of knowledge and intellect was and is seen as the source of genuine esteem and respect. Many immigrant groups have had the same attitude in the first and second generations and some seem to lose it subsequently. There is a latent anti-intellectualism in America that seems to overcome this early appreciation of learning. Pride in being a top student sometimes gives way to fear of being thought a bookworm - or even worse, a "geek." Here is where some serious soul searching must be done by community leaders and the media. What are we honestly saying to our young? What values are we really conveying? Does becoming an educated person truly mean anything in the last analysis? The objective here involves the simple truth that the desire to learn is fundamentally as critical as the opportunity to learn. Desire flows from children believing that learning matters. As a volunteer in the Peace Corps I taught students who were desperately poor by our standards. We used outdated or inappropriate textbooks and the "facilities" were de minimus. The students were 9th and 10th graders almost all living away from home and thus removed from the support of parents and family. But they learned. And learned very well despite every conceivable disadvantage. Because they wanted to. Because they valued it. And because it was truly valued in their culture.  Page 64 No American classroom I ever entered was as resource poor as my classrooms in Ethiopia. But as I began to appreciate how the will to be educated conquered all these obstacles, I would recall the stories of Abraham Lincoln reading by candlelight. I would also remember how driven my father and his siblings were to learn despite their immigrant backgrounds. These experiences left me a firm believer that society creates learning by simply valuing it. No amount of money, no accumulation of technological equipment, can overcome a child's sense that learning really doesn't matter that much. We have sent those signals and we have to change them. The conveying of values occurs every day. The conveyors are the leaders of America, the leaders of its subgroups and the lords of the media. Each must commit to sending a pro-learning, pro-intellect, pro-education message. How? The best example in my mind is Bill Cosby. The Huxtable family, whatever the criticisms of it, promotes a set of values with respect for learning (and family) at the core. It demonstrates how to retain one's identity within a context that maximizes opportunity. A second example is Cosby himself. He gave $20 million to Spelman College, a powerful message of deep commitment to education - in this case the education of blacks. This is how people convey a value system. This is how learning is elevated to its rightful and necessary status. American philanthropists, foundations, corporations, and everyday citizens would do well to see this as a worthy road to travel. The same centrality of education must be promoted by the local press. A student who can throw an accurate forward pass is certain in his mind that press adulation will follow. A student with very high scores in the SAT's never thinks that it will be worthy of press coverage. Yet, which is more important? The print media, radio and television should have education reporters that systematically and regularly report on what is happening in the classroom as well as what is happening on the athletic fields. Some are already moving in this direction. It must become a stampede. The third component is equality of opportunity. In the great economic global competition, a nation's team must be made up of all its diverse members. As we face the challenges of this global economy and as we face the challenges of a threatened environment, every American contributes to our response. Positively or negatively. We will not become a world economic competitor using only some of America. We will not become a society at peace with its natural environment if whole sections of the population feel that they have no stake in that society. By its sheer composition, America must be resolutely inclusive. Every person is part of the solution or, if not, will be part of the problem. Everyone will either be a rower or an anchor. We can have some effect on which they will be.  Page 65 The laws for the most part are in place. The task is the emotional acceptance, indeed, the emotional embrace of the founding principle "All Men Are Created Equal." This basic belief has to empower people in all the modern forms. Those forms include race, sex, age and sexual preference. The battles of the past have been bitter. We must put them behind us and not tolerate the continued attempts to undermine the progress we have made. This guarding against encroachments is a constant struggle in the area of civil rights, women's rights and affirmative action. It's not just the laws but the messages those laws send that are important. Human rights has to do with how we regard each other. Diminution of that regard lessens all of us. And as a nation we are made less viable if part of our human potential goes unrealized. America is where "Be all you can be" was chosen as a slogan for its armed forces. For good reason. Because in America more than anywhere else, those five words are the cornerstone of what we believe. The role of the President here is the constant and unrelenting reaffirmation of that cornerstone. We have to arrive at the day when we truly look at each other as family. Not just because it would be nice. But because the cohesiveness it will provide will ensure our sustainability. Giving 'Tis more blessed to give than to receive. Now there's a shopworn bromide if there ever was one. Just the kind of homily intended to lull the innocent into patterns of behavior that the more worldly know to avoid. Except that it's true. It is better to give. Giving takes time and it takes money. But look at givers, and then look at takers. Who is really happier? Giving is Americana. Thousands of colleges, hospitals, museums and theatres exist because of the philanthropy of individuals. Tithing is an honored - and expected - part of some religious traditions. Yet giving in America is very uneven. Some people of wealth recognize their responsibility back to society and are quite generous. Others feel no such responsibility and lavish upon themselves and their friends every conceivable indulgence. The latter are hailed by the media which eagerly covers every last gaudy detail. The former will never have a program to compete with "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." So it is with corporate America. Some companies are extremely committed to being a good corporate neighbor. They recognize the need to give back to the community and seek to lend personnel and financial resources to aid local and national causes. Other companies have a culture which, frankly, doesn't give a damn about what's happening outside its office window or factory gate.  Page 66 There is little to no public recognition of the good corporate citizen. There is absolutely no incentive, beyond their own personal values, for company presidents and boards of directors to engage in corporate giving. The President can change this. There should be a Blue Ribbon Committee of prominent individuals created to establish voluntary guidelines for corporate giving. Standards can be set. It has been done in Minneapolis. Companies can choose to honor them, ignore them, or something in between. And every year a list should be compiled as to who gave what, and that listing should be made public. Finally, the media should consider this listing as important news and report on it extensively. Companies that care should be publicly acknowledged. Companies that don't should be open to scrutiny and criticism. The President should establish Presidential Medals for Corporate and Individual Philanthropy. The point here is to establish a culture of giving, an embrace of giving, as an esteemed - and expected - value for corporate America. This notion, hopefully, will then create an environment wherein Americans of all economic means will find themselves more open to the same principle. If this were to happen the bonds between us all would be strengthened. Now, tell the truth. If Donald Trump had endowed chairs at Howard University instead of buying that yacht wouldn't Howard be better off? Wouldn't the country be better off? And truly, wouldn't Donald Trump be better off? Let's deglorify indulgence and return giving to the place it enjoyed when great people made this country. Culture as part of a Culture Civilizations are measured by their art and cultural achievements. Sometimes it's architecture, sometimes it's music, sometimes it's paintings and sometimes it's literature. These storehouses of human creativity and inspiration mark the high water marks of what we are. They are the places and events which can uplift the soul - especially the soul of the young. How do you measure the impact on a young child of being exposed to a performance of the Nutcracker Suite or the Messiah in December? Or the impact on an adolescent being taken to a matinee performance of "Les Miserables?" Or a summers night listening to a local orchestra perform? Or a periodic visit to a sculptor as she works on a piece of public art? Or the chance to see live theatre instead of just another movie? We would all acknowledge these occurrences as valuable. But whose children have these experiences? Generally it is the children of the already educated or appreciative. That's fine, but the impact would be greater upon children of modest circumstances who otherwise would not be so exposed. These children need a spiritual booster shot. Some of them need it desperately. They need one spark, one glimmer to light the way or to suggest a new direction. This is where you change lives.  Page 67 In the absence of this, they will receive their values only from the street and from the spiritual emptiness of television programming. Investing in community cultural events is part of creating a society that is intact and vibrant. During budget crises, government funds for the arts and humanities are always a first-cut priority. The reverse should be true. During economic crises the need is greater. The United States government must undertake to prioritize funding of the arts and humanities, particularly for communities outside the major urban centers. The amounts here are de minimus in the overall budgetary scheme of things. It should be seen as an investment in the personal horizons of its citizens, particularly the young. Not simply for the sake of supporting cultural activities although that alone should be enough. But also in the understanding that we are competing with nations that already value such activities. Our increased embrace of them will strengthen our people and help establish an increasingly viable and functional American culture. Spirituality Separation of church and state is fundamental to freedom in America. This principle was adamantly proclaimed by the Founding Fathers. They did not, however, dismiss spirituality. Indeed, belief in a higher order was part and parcel of the early Americans - both the first Indian nations and the early European settlers. That spirituality is not unique to America, of course. There never was a great sustaining nation that was aspiritual. In our modern technological age with its impersonalness, the search for larger purpose is no less felt. That search for a deeper meaning can exhibit itself in destructive ways, such as drug and alcohol abuse, as well as other behavioral asymmetry. It need not be. The overt quest for spirituality has been seen politically as a valuable electoral advantage by some on the right and a bit too unsophisticated by some on the left. Neither is appropriate. We all seek God in our own way. We are all engaged in the search for understanding of our place in the great order of things. A public acknowledgement of that search and a stated respect for wherever that search may lead are not improper activities for the political leadership of this nation. The Land and the Buildings The culture of a people is not separable from the physical surroundings of that people. We are of the earth. The preservation of the beauty of open spaces should be pursued not only for the environmental reasons stated earlier, it should be pursued for its capacity to renew the spirit and to lend harmony to our culture.  Page 68 The same is true within the land that we occupy. There is a character to a place. That character is defining. Too often in America the inhabited land all begins to look alike. What is unique about a locale is lost under the onslaught of sameness. A mall is a mall is a mall. A commercial strip is a commercial strip is a commercial strip. A highway is a highway is a highway. Care and attention should be paid to preserving the character of the different parts of America. The President is uniquely positioned to encourage Americans to contemplate these matters. Although it is a predominately local matter, there are federal roles such as historic preservation grants and UDAG-like programs to keep urban centers viable. Many of these cities are already well on their way to implosion. But beyond that, there is the bully pulpit as Prince Charles has so aptly demonstrated in Great Britain. He cares about how his country resonates with its surroundings. Our leaders should do so as well. Public Order There is no way to talk about American culture in 1991 without addressing the issue of crime and public order. There is a darker side to the way we interact with each other. Sadly, the rise in crime in our country has been a constant theme for decades. This is especially true in our cities. It is impossible to achieve a viable American culture in the midst of uncontrolled violence. Citizens will simply not value their membership in a society where they lack a sense of reasonable physical security. The fear of crime erodes the bond between the citizen and the society. Many of our inner cities are cauldrons of acultural behavior. Innocent people are unable to escape the downdraft of this activity. How do we address this issue? For years we have had a great deal of law and order rhetoric from Richard Nixon's unleashing of Spiro Agnew to the Willie Horton issue in 1988. Congress has passed tougher crime legislation and the death penalty has become an all-too-common occurrence. But the goal of "safe streets" remains elusive. We now have a greater percentage of our citizenry behind bars than any nation on earth. That must be a sobering realization since it has not significantly affected the citizenry's perception of physical security. There are approaches to crime that deal with prevention. Obviously education, a sense of community, self-esteem - all these are ingredients essential to minimizing the likelihood that someone would engage in criminal behavior. These matters have been addressed earlier in this paper and are worthy of reemphasis. There are other approaches that deal with punishment and the certainty of that punishment. These are equally important and, as referenced above, the Congress has passed laws to accomplish this.  Page 69 So what else can be done? There are two areas that I believe are left unaddressed. Neither is new. Neither is easy. The first involves getting guns off our streets and the second involves recognizing that wholesale drug trafficking should qualify for capital punishment. Gun Control There is no greater hypocrisy than the prototypical Republican position of tough on crime and easy on AK-47's. The rationale for this is pure politics. Appeal to the millions who worry about their safety but don't antagonize the National Rifle Association. The availability of all kinds of weapons in America is no accident. The right to bear arms is seen by some as the only absolute right granted by the constitution. We have freedom of speech but you can't yell "fire" in a movie theatre. We have freedom of the press but go too far and you'll be sued for libel. The two-facedness of the Republican posture is reflected in the bizarre dilemma faced by many police, particularly urban police. Whom do you support? The candidate who has the tougher posture on crime but protects the rights of criminals to have assault weapons? Or the candidate who would ban assault weapons? I would suggest that our times requires a toughness in dealing with crime, but combined with aggressive commitment to get guns out of the hands of those who shouldn't have them. This extends beyond AK-47's. The right to bear arms is not a blanket purchase order for anyone to buy anything. The ease of killing with a gun stands in sharp contrast to the difficulty of accomplishing the same end with a knife or other such weapon. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. True. But people without guns have a harder time doing it. Guns should be available for self-protection by those who choose to have them. They should not be available, however, for those whose motives are injurious to social stability. The Brady bill to finally bring about effective gun control should be passed immediately. It is tragic that George Bush has chosen not to endorse it. A serious, non-ideological commitment to return to a sustainable sense of public order is needed. Too many Americans perceive a kind of anarchy in the streets and that cannot be tolerated. These guns must be taken off the streets. Capital Crimes Against Society Crime in America today falls into two categories in my mind. The first is the level of crime inherent in any society. There will always be a criminal element and there will always be crimes of passion. The second is crime that is drug-related. And this is not a level of criminal activity that should be acceptable. It is a threat to our very being.  Page 70 This threat does not result from guns or bombs or knives. This threat results from commerce. It is entrepreneurial. Yet it kills. It kills in massive numbers. Some of the people it kills die. Others live but in a larger sense they die as well. This is not your every day one-on-one street crime. Or your crime of passion. This is a methodical, planned, knowing slaughter of the many in pursuit of money. Massive amounts of money. And this slaughter is today the greatest threat to our domestic common security. It is the threat of big-time drug dealing. How can we tolerate this dissipation of our collective strength? Drugs are overwhelming us. No society ravaged by drugs is going to compete with anybody. Yet those who engage in and profit from this trade are considered lesser criminals by the criminal code. I kill one person in a fit of passion and I am a murderer. I kill thousands of people by methodical drug trafficking and I am not a murderer. By what standard of logic? By what definition of true threat? Who truly kills the drug user found in an alley with a needle in his arm? Who truly kills the store owner murdered by a drug user in search of quick money for a drug purchase? Who truly kills the intravenous drug user who contracts AIDS? Who truly kills the victim of an automobile crash caused by drug use? Who truly kills the newborn cocaine dependent baby? The major drug trafficker does. Yet in states that impose the death penalty he is immune. I repeat. By what definition of real threat? By what recognition of actual damage to our societal core? If the death penalty is society's way of identifying the greatest threat, it must look past the one-on-one crime of passion or criminal intent. It must concentrate on those who would destroy all of us. It must focus on the trafficker and, once and for all, declare a war on drugs that is a war on drugs. Billions upon billions for defense against fading foreign threats embodied by the Soviets and only hesitance in addressing the true angels of death within our borders. Unless drug dealing is significantly reduced, we will never be a viable nation. We will never compete. We will be dragged down by our fellow citizens lost in the demonic caverns of drug dependence. Conclusion We will be what our culture empowers us to be. To strengthen our common culture must be our common mission. Recognition of, and dedication to, that mission is the mandate of our leadership. It doesn't lend itself to ten point programs and quarterly reviews. It will be a discussion that will never end. It should never end. The journey to renew America's spiritual base will take us back through our history to harvest the wisdom of that history. We will revisit our ancestors' thinking and learn once again to pay homage to the basic values that made America. Those values, long since articulated, will then serve as our safe passage to the future.  Page 71 In our collective veins flows the blood of those who crossed the Bering Land bridge. Of those who endured deprivation during the winter in Plymouth. Of those who suffered in the holds of slave ships and on the decks of immigrant ships. Vietnamese boat people. Hungarian freedom fighters. Salvadoran refugees. On and on. Above all, there flows the blood of those who died for America. For our freedom. Not so we could be cynical, or uncaring or second best. But in the belief that we would be worthy of their sacrifice in how we lived our lives and how we honored our country. This is the New American Mandate.  Page 72 VII. Return to Purpose Adversity tests the character of individuals. It also tests the character of a people. We are now being challenged by outside forces that seek to erode our standard of living and by others that portend environmental and energy cataclysm. In addition, we are challenged by internal forces that are undermining the fabric of our social order. What would our ancestors have done? Simple. They would have accepted the challenges and pushed ahead secure in the knowledge that their destiny was within their control. Avoidance was not what they were all about. So it must be with us. Facing our challenges forthrightly is how we honor the labors of our forebearers. It is our moral imperative. But, more importantly, it is the source of our hope. We are a blessed America. It is our will and determination that will deliver us. Let us, again, unleash the spirit of the American people and again secure our future and the future of our descendents. Let us return to purpose. 

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