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Rex Nutting
Nov. 11, 2010, 4:12 p.m. EST
View all Rex Nutting "º
"¹ Previous Column
Short-term thinking, long-term problems
First Take "º
With Tina Brown, Newsweek has a shot
By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) "” There's nothing easier than locking 20 of the smartest people in the world in a room and telling them to solve all our problems.
You and I could take a weekend and we'd figure out how to fix the U.S. budget deficit, come up with a plan to rebalance the global economy, reform the ghastly college football championships, and still have time to clean the garage.
The hard part is getting the 6.9 billion people who weren't in the room to go along with the plan.
The fact is, our politics are much more broken than our economics. We can figure out the economics, but we can't summon the political will and means to do it.
Watch a video of Seoul's ostentatious G-20 summit venue, the COEX convention center.
And yet we keep trying the old-fashioned method: Lock 20 wise people in a room and have them solve our problems. Let's have 18 politicians come up with a plan to balance the budget! Let's have the leaders of the 20 largest economies go to Seoul for a couple of days! Problems solved, right?
They come up with plans, all right. They might even work, if we tried them.
On Wednesday, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairmen of the presidential deficit reduction commission, released their preliminary recommendations. Their draft report was full of detailed cuts in federal spending and changes in the tax code that could bring the budget back into balance. Read our story on the deficit commission.
It'll never happen. Why? The other 310 million Americans who weren't in the room. Their plan may work in theory, but in the real world, it'll take actual give-and-take, actual sacrifices to make it happen. Some will win, some will lose.
None of us is willing to endure the pain without being assured that we had our say, that this is the best we can do, that it's for the common good, that the other guy on the other side of the table isn't getting away with something.
The plan can't work without trust. And right now, our biggest national deficit is trust.
Building trust is hard work. It can't be done in a weekend, or in backrooms. It's best done face-to-face.
You'd think Barack Obama would understand this. It's the essence of community organizing, where he got his start. It's hours of knocking on doors, talking, listening, taking small accomplishments and building coalitions. It's getting to the point where even those who oppose you trust you to say what you mean and be true to your word.
Obama's opponents do not trust him, nor does he trust them.
Tina Brown, the editor of the Daily Beast, may be just what Newsweek needs, writes Jon Friedman.
10:49 a.m. Today10:49 a.m. Nov. 12, 2010
- roneco | 11:31 a.m. Today11:31 a.m. Nov. 12, 2010
"#Gold futures drop on #China rate concerns http://bit.ly/buH3KM" 2:09 p.m. EST, Nov. 12, 2010 from MarketWatch
"For the latest on the European market, follow @mktweurope. For Asia market information, follow @mktwasia" 1:45 p.m. EST, Nov. 12, 2010 from MarketWatch
"Metals futures decline sharply: silver off 5.5%; palladium, 4%; copper and gold, 3% http://on.mktw.net/aPGp3Z" 1:14 p.m. EST, Nov. 12, 2010 from MarketWatch
"Ireland's benchmark index is still more than 70% below its peak http://bit.ly/9B8yRs" 12:52 p.m. EST, Nov. 12, 2010 from MarketWatch
"U.S. consumer sentiment edges up in November http://bit.ly/aj5SWL" 12:22 p.m. EST, Nov. 12, 2010 from MarketWatch
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