Our Sputnick Moment?

There is nothing quite like a State of the Union address. The power and majesty of the President entering the House of Representative to a raucous ovation, from both parties is inspirational and unique to America. The entire government is represented in the audience. All are there to hear the President’s governing outline for the year. It the bully pulpit of the president at it best. It provides the President the singular event to set the nation’s agenda, to educate and to persuade the Congress and the American people to support his agenda.

There is no doubt we are in turbulent times. The President is faced with a weak economy, a nuclear Iran, a fractious Congress and most importantly a national debt that is spiraling out of control. The president chose to use a historical reference called the Sputnik moment to position his argument on how America will move forward. I think this reference failed and in turn the president missed a critical opportunity to prepare the American people for our greatest challenge in decades.

If you were around in the 1950’s or a history buff you might understand the reference to the Sputnik moment. Here is a little background. During the 1950’s all of America was transfixed on the growing cold war between the United States and the Soviet Empire. The majority of Americans saw this conflict as a battle between good and evil. The population knew that the Soviet Union was a very real threat to the American way of life. The battle lines were clear. They needed no explaining.
In 1957, the Soviets launched a basketball sized satellite into orbit. When this was announced to the world, America was dumbstruck. The Russians were beating the US into space. The Russians were winning therefore the Americans were losing. The consequences would be dire. Our very existence was called into question.

Why the panic? What could this little space age basketball do to the US? Absolutely nothing. This satellite had nothing to do with the Sputnik moment. The satellite was irrelevant. The fact it was launched into space was everything. Every American knew that if the Soviets could launch a satellite they could launch a ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States. President Eisenhower seized on this and called for investments in what later became NASA and other military and technological initiatives.

A Sputnik moment became a metaphor for the realization, triggered perhaps by a threat or challenge, of a need to do something different, setting a course in a new direction.

So why am I critical of President Obama’s call that we are facing another Sputnik moment? What is the threat we are facing? I don’t know. He did not tell us. He laid out a lot of platitudes about winning the future but he did not identify the very event that should galvanize all Americans to action.

Our Sputnik moment is the out of control national debt. It is the equivalent of a financial armageddon that is just as dangerous as a nuclear armageddon in the 1950’s. Our country’s very way of life is at stake if we do not gain control of our budget and debt.

It really is not that complicated. Our debt now exceeds $14 trillion dollars and is projected to increase by over one trillion a year for the foreseeable future. This means that our debt load will soon be greater than the entire economy. You do not have to be an economist to know that is not sustainable. We are not guaranteed a future. There is no god given right that the United States will exist in perpetuity.

The President glossed over the threat and jumped to his solution. More spending and a 5 year freeze on the discretionary portion of the budget. This freeze constitutes a $400 billion savings over ten years compared to a projected increase in the budget of ten plus trillion over the same period. He misled the public in that his spending freeze would solve the deficit problem.

He failed to deliver on the Sputnik moment in two ways. He did not define the event and his solution of spending more was not a new direction. It was more of the same.
Despite all of this I hold out a hope that President Obama is uniquely positioned to solve the spending and debt problem. I am a contrarian when it comes to major political break throughs. I think some of our greatest success comes from the most unlikely president. Here are few examples:

• It took a ardent anti-communist, Richard Nixon, to be the first American president to visit China

• It took a southerner, Lyndon Johnson, to get civil rights passed

• It took a Democrat, Bill Clinton, to overhaul welfare

I think the budget deficit can only be solved by a Democrat. If a Republican proposes deep cuts, he or she will be assailed as hating the poor. If President Obama can seize the initiative, his solid liberal background will provide the cover needed to make the necessary cuts to the welfare state.
However, cuts to the welfare state will not be enough. We must make cuts in the warfare state as well. For that he will need a Republican to propose the cuts. Just in the case of a Republican cutting welfare it is political suicide for a Democrat to cut defense. It will take cuts to both parties to bring our budget under control.

I think there are two questions. Does president Obama really understand the magnitude of the deficit and does he have the will power to address it? If so, he will have to use his political capital to ensure welfare cuts while partnering with a true patriot on the Republican side that will help address excess spending on the defense side of the ledger. This is the kind of bipartisanship we need.