Is the Tea Party Just a “Tempest in a Tea Kettle?”
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Thomas Friedman wrote an excellent article for the NY Times yesterday, in which he examines the Tea Party movement and ponders its ultimate impact on not just the coming election, but the future of America. He asserts there are really two Tea Party movements:
- The Tea Kettle movement – the one everybody’s seeing on TV and in new coverage of rallies all over America. Friedman says this one can’t have a positive, lasting impact on America, because all it’s doing is “letting off steam”:
The Tea Kettle movement can’t have a positive impact on the country because it has both misdiagnosed America’s main problem and hasn’t even offered a credible solution for the problem it has identified. How can you take a movement seriously that says it wants to cut government spending by billions of dollars but won’t identify the specific defense programs, Social Security, Medicare or other services it’s ready to cut — let alone explain how this will make us more competitive and grow the economy?
- The Tea Party movement -which he calls the important one- the one that will clearly identify the problem, and offers a plan to put America back on track:
To me, that is a plan that starts by asking: what is America’s core competency and strategic advantage, and how do we nurture it? Answer: It is our ability to attract, develop and unleash creative talent. That means men and women who invent, build and sell more goods and services that make people’s lives more productive, healthy, comfortable, secure and entertained than any other country.
I agree with this assessment completely. This is precisely the kind of activity that the current administration’s policies is strangling. The creative genius of Americans, free from the shackles of intrusive and overbearing government intervention, is what propelled our nation to the preeminent position among nations of the world. To accomplish this, says Friedman, the “real” Tea Party movement needs to find a leader: one with three important characteristics:
The important Tea Party movement, which stretches from centrist Republicans to independents right through to centrist Democrats, understands this at a gut level and is looking for a leader with three characteristics. First, a patriot: a leader who is more interested in fighting for his country than his party. Second, a leader who persuades Americans that he or she actually has a plan not just to cut taxes or pump stimulus, but to do something much larger — to make America successful, thriving and respected again. And third, someone with the ability to lead in the face of uncertainty and not simply whine about how tough things are — a leader who believes his job is not to read the polls but to change the polls.
Friedman goes on to offer his ideas on the sorts of things this Tea Party leader would need to accomplish in order to “grow our way out of debt with American workers who are more empowered and educated to compete.” I can’t say I agree with all his prescriptions – but there’s not really enough detailed information to make an educated assessment. I’m also not sure that there is a leader in the current political landscape – at least, one known to enough of the population to make a difference- that fits his description. A man (or woman) who’s more interested in fighting for his country than his party might encounter significant resistance in unshackling America’s creative talent. It seems a lot of politicians these days are more interested in getting re-elected than working to fix our country’s problems. Yes, finding such a leader would be a tall order indeed.
Read the whole thing here
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