President Obama’s State of the Union address earlier this week was largely given over to visions and promises, carefully phrased to make them sound practical and affordable, as though eventual success was all but inevitable. Despite four years of economic stagnation, the President urged Congress to tackle poverty, revive failing neighbourhoods, restore innovation to the manufacturing sector, modernize healthcare, and develop alternative energy sources − at no extra cost to the taxpayer! He even promised to approve “comprehensive immigration reform” if Congress sent some his way.
Immigration reform could irreversibly alter the American electorate within a generation, so it was no surprise that the GOP chose Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida, a much-touted nominee-in-waiting, to supply the traditional rebuttal. But the content of Rubio’s speech got lost in his botched delivery; he sweated visibly, dabbed at his face repeatedly and even stopped to drink from a bottle of water. (With its usual relish for the absurd, the US media began to refer to his “drinking problem” and the “bottle of water-gate”.) Yet despite the differences in rhetorical style and assurance of delivery, Obama and Rubio were both addressing the same sceptical public on behalf of institutions which inspire little trust.
Few Americans believe the federal government can do half of what the President suggested, much less pursue its increasingly complex foreign policy at the same time. The Republican Party meanwhile − having failed to bring about a ‘one-term’ Obama presidency − finds itself threatened with irrelevance, unable to find a message that moves beyond implacable opposition to anything proposed by the current administration. This stubbornness has had predictable consequences. The disappointments of Obama’s first term produced sharp swings in his approval ratings but, much to their chagrin, the GOP-controlled congress that worked so hard to cripple Obama’s agenda usually suffered public approval ratings that were even worse.
This lack of political confidence is hardly confined to America. In recent months, despite its ringside seat at a financial crisis that ought to have deepened its appreciation of the need for continental solidarity, British euroscepticism has threatened to fragment the EU; fragile governments in Greece and Italy have stumbled from one crisis to the next, and Spain looks set to lose its new government to a corruption scandal. Further afield the Arab Spring has lapsed into an ‘Arab Winter’ − most noticeably in Egypt and Tunisia – as governments fail to deliver the promised democratization, and the carnage in Syria threatens to push the region even closer to a widespread conflict. Closer to home, Venezuela remains profoundly uncertain of what a post-Chávez will bring, and Brazil is slowly coming to terms with the levels of corruption brought to light in the ‘Mensalao’ trial.
Nor is the problem confined to politics. US consumers familiar with warnings about Chinese toys made of toxic materials are now learning that European food may be no less hazardous. Investigators tracing the horse-meat in prepared meals sold in UK supermarkets have uncovered a Byzantine food supply chain that involved companies in France, Cyprus, Holland, Poland and Romania.
Even religious institutions are suffering crises of confidence. The sudden retirement of Pope Benedict XVI has thrown the Vatican’s problems into the spotlight, but it is worth remembering that the Anglican Church has had its share of divisive issues in the recent past. In fact the appointment of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, a former oil executive with only one year’s experience as a bishop, gives some idea of the urgent need for change within these venerable institutions.
In different ways, all of these crises illustrate the difficulty that any institution faces in a rapidly changing world. The varying responses also reveal a lot about the cultures which underpin the institutions themselves. Faced with serious adversity the US usually finds a way to rally itself and adapt. Europe, on the other hand, has to struggle against a tendency to lapse into old divisions and isolationism. Much older institutions like the Vatican and the Church of England have the hardest time of all in these crises, often because their culture admits much less flexibility. In fact it has proved much easier to get the US military to accept gay soldiers and let women serve in active combat than it has to quell the passions provoked by similar issues in either the Roman Catholic or the Anglican churches.
Young democracies, like those in the Caribbean, often talk as though their political crises are unique, but even a cursory look at evidence from other countries shows that is not so. What does seem to matter, however, is the depth of our response to these crises, especially how well rooted the response is in what might be called our culture’s better nature. America’s extraordinary emphasis on individual freedom, for example, has allowed it, however imperfectly, to move beyond well-established prejudices against racial and sexual minorities, and to address the no less serious problems of gender discrimination. More entrenched cultures, religious institutions in particular, struggle to evolve when faced with similar crises. This is a lesson worth remembering in developing countries. We may be struggling to find the answers to our own crises, but we also have the freedom that comes from our relative lack of experience, and this freedom can allow us to avoid the mistakes of our elders.
