Speaker Series, CTD
I went and listened to Doris Kearns Goodwin speak last night. Very impressive. She spoke at breakneck speed on the topic of her new book, Abe Lincolin. She discussed history and the time period in a very compelling way, focusing on the people and their relationships rather than the events/facts/figures that typically get associated with historical study. Lincolin was an interesting guy, apparently a bit crude, and by modern HBR standards, and exemplary leader. He filled his cabinet with those who competed against him in the electoral races (to ensure he was forced to clearly and compellingly state his position), and he put his personal enemies in positions of power in instances where they were the right person for the job.
She also did a great job pointing out some of the opportunities that the current administration has failed to capitalize upon, particularly in the current “terrorism conflict”. She said the USA could have deepened their domestic investment in police/fire/emergency crews, which would have had collateral benefits to the Hurricane response. They could have used the conflict to justify additional health care reform, under the guise that we could find ourselves facing biological weapons. The USA could have followed Truman’s efforts in getting everyone involved in the war (Truman did it via fuel rationing, scrap rubber drives, scrap aluminum drives, etc), and could have reduced our energy consumption and focused on increasing the speed of innovation in alternative energy production, thereby reducing long term dependence on oil. And while these are all rather “after the fact” and perhaps naively optimistic (since it presupposes that we could have done these things but chose not to), they make an interesting case for the idea that the current administration lost the chance to spin their war efforts into a social good, or at least, an inclusive process that might have altered the public perception on why we’re involved in the conflict at all. Her strongest criticism was that Bush has let the public come to question our involvement, because they’ve not clearly identified why US troops are there at all.