Eugene Robinson: Obama Will Create a More Perfect Union

“May you live in interesting times” is supposed to be an ancient Chinese curse, but I can’t find evidence that the saying is Chinese at all, much less that it’s ancient. One of the earliest reliable citations seems to be a 1950 short story by the British science-fiction author Eric Frank Russell, writing under the pen name Duncan H. Munro, who quotes the imprecation and then adds: “It isn’t a curse any more. It’s a blessing.”

That’s the glass-half-full way of seeing this extraordinary moment. As we enter the holiday season, it feels as if our nation is at a cusp, a brink, a verge. It’s true that if things get much more “interesting” we might have a collective nervous breakdown. But along with the anxiety, there’s also a sense of rare opportunity — a chance to emerge better than we were economically, politically and socially.

Easy for you to say, many people would respond, and they’d have a point. I’ve been as mesmerized and freaked-out as anyone watching the stock market lose nearly half its value, then recover some ground, then oscillate so wildly that a 200-point gain or loss in the Dow is the new definition of a slow day. I’ve lost money (not that I had that much in the first place), but I haven’t been wiped out the way some people have. I don’t have an adjustable rate mortgage or a house that’s “underwater.” My employer is still in business.

I do have to learn to live with the new economic reality, though. I now know that there’s no law of economics that says real estate prices must always rise. I know that a house doesn’t make a very reliable bank, that “credit” isn’t an infinite pot of cheap money, and that having a little money in a savings account is better than Ambien for inducing a good night’s sleep.

More importantly, we’ve all learned that dealmaking for dealmaking’s sake — for decades, the most highly compensated business activity in America — does not in fact create enduring wealth. There are straight-A seniors at Harvard and Princeton who planned to go into investment banking before the whole industry imploded. Now, maybe some of these brainiacs will go to work for the auto industry and save Detroit. Maybe some will invent, manufacture and market world-changing new “green technology.” Maybe some will join the Peace Corps. Maybe some will become teachers.

Politically, Americans are less divided than we’ve been since at least the Reagan era, perhaps longer. I know that many people would dispute that assertion, but I’ll defend it. Barack Obama’s victory margin, 53 percent to 46 percent, didn’t qualify as a popular vote landslide. But considered with other factors — Obama’s electoral vote haul, which was a landslide; the Democratic Party’s gains in both houses of Congress — the outcome was a clear mandate.  Read More.

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