NOT SO GRAND

I was reading a headline this morning using the acronym GOP for the Republican Party. And I thought to myself, what's so grand about the Grand Old Party any more? It seems to me that it's a Petty Od Party, a POP, with small ideas and mean-minded policies for the vast majority of Americans. If there's anything grand in what they have been putting forward as ideas in their primaries and, more recently, their budget, it's a grand life-style for the already very rich. For the rest of us, not so much.

It happened that I also watched a documentary last night about the building of the Panama Canal. There was a grand idea, if ever there was one, and it came about because it became the grand vision of Teddy Roosevelt--a grand old Republican, if ever there was one. The empire building, the assumption of American exceptionalism and American superiority may be questionable, in the light of history--just as European colonialism. But the idea was certainly a grand one, as was the achievement, still one of the greatest engineering feats in human history.

I do not side with those who would deny funds to our space program, and I am greatly saddened by its currently much reduced ambitions. I think we need grand ideas, not only to expand our horizons and keep us moving forward into an exciting future; but, in the case of the space program, to stimulate the inventiveness and creativity so essential to our economic health. Thinking small brings small results, and it seems to me that we have been thinking smaller and smaller as a nation in the recent past; we talk too much about what we can't do, out of fear---or budgetary restraint--and too little about what we might do if we could envision it. We have become so risk-averse, so accustomed to the knee-jerk "no" that we have forgotten how to say "yes!"

All very well to talk about the individual effort, about privatization. The truth is that the resources available only to the collective power of government are sufficient to support a truly grand idea, a truly grand vision of the future. That government today is more and more reluctant to put its weight behind the big ideas does not bode well for the future of this country as a major presence on the world stage. We are likely, it seems to me, to go the way of past empires, into the trash bin of history.

I have caught glimpses of great ideas from our current President, for example in calling for support for research and experimentation with alternative energy sources. Which is one more good reason to let him loose in a second term, with less to lose and much more to gain. It's my belief that he envisions greatness, but that his vision is hampered by the picayune--and by the practical contingencies of administration. Let's give him a chance to achieve the greatness of his promise.