When the General Motors company announced the shutdown of four assembly plants that produced gas-guzzlers like SUVs, the company acknowledged what most of us already know: It’s long past time that we Americans begin to curb our appetites for large-scale energy hogs.
The company also said it plans to seek a buyer for its line of Hummers – those strange tank look-a-likes modeled after Army vehicles that came into public view during the first Gulf war and became popular among people who have nothing else to do with their money. The only rational explanation for why people would want to buy a Hummer is to shout out to fellow drivers,” I have more money than I know what to do with, and I hereby claim my right to the road and to as much gasoline as I want, and I dare the rest of you to challenge me.” As the saying goes, “Nothing exceeds like excess.”
But now, with the cost of fuel at $4 a gallon and rising, with costs of everything from food to housing to health care becoming more unaffordable for more people each day, with an economy in a downward spiral, and with a war in Iraq that costs billions each month, many of our neighbors find now that they must make uncomfortable choices between the things they want and the things they need.
As the Rolling Stones sang, “You can’t always get what you want.” It is a lesson now being learned widely. How many now find that the equity in their homes has vanished in the midst of the mortgage crisis? How many find they can’t afford to downsize their outsized automobiles because the gas guzzlers are only worth half as much or less than their estimated value? How many families now struggle to afford basic foods because the costs of corn have been driven up by the diversion of large amounts of the product to ethanol production, and because even rice, that most basic food staple, must be rationed by wholesale stores due to increasing worldwide demand?
Here in these early years of the 21st century, Americans find ourselves in a situation unknown to previous generations: With globalization, we must now compete with others in the world – in China, in India, in the burgeoning European Union – for resources we once took for granted, and believed would be ours, always and forever. If the 20th can be called the American Century, it doesn’t seem likely that we will be able to make a similar claim for the 21st, a brave new world.
And so, our attention rightly should turn to the waging of the 2008 presidential campaign. The main candidates now seem to have been chosen – John McCain and Barack Obama are the presumptive nominees – and the debate must now begin. On the surface, it’s a struggle between “Experience Counts” and “Give a Young Person a Chance.” But far more compelling is the need for change in this country – change in the way we consume, in the way we live and work, in the way we care for our young and for our elderly. Needed, too, is change in the way our leaders relate to the rest of the world.
Change, of course, has been the theme of the Obama candidacy, and the Illinois senator has promised to make changes. But Senator McCain can also deliver change, given his reputation of being willing to challenge his own party when he believed he had a better path.
There are just 152 days – less than 22 weeks – to find out all we can about these two men and about their visions for America. Then we will elect a new president come Nov. 4. Let us hope this final campaign engages all Americans in deciding the key question for our country: Where do we go from here?
