Listen to “Enough About the Reflecting Pool” on Spreaker.
America is hurting. The evidence is abundant and easily accessible in today’s connected world. Open Google or your preferred digital purveyor and the statistics come with ease and are hard to ignore:
- The national debt exceeds $39 trillion and is barreling toward $40 trillion, with deficit after deficit still in sight.
- The Congressional Budget Office projects population growth averaging just 0.2 percent annually through 2055, far below historical norms.
- Americans are marrying later and having fewer children. More children are growing up in single-parent households than in many peer nations.
- Roughly 40 percent of U.S. births occur outside marriage.
- About 35 percent of American adults are obese, compared with a global average of about 19 percent.
- Infant mortality rates have recently worsened, according to national health rankings.
- Anxiety and depression continue to rise among both adults and children.
- Tens of millions of American adults read below proficient levels. Employers routinely report difficulty finding workers with basic math and reading skills.
- Homicide rates remain substantially higher than those of most developed nations.
- Fentanyl and opioid trafficking continue to devastate communities across the country.
- Surveys consistently find large portions of the public unable to identify the basic structure of their government, let alone understand their constitutional rights and protections.
- In the 1950s, roughly 98 percent of prime-age men participated in the workforce. Today, that figure is in the high-80 percent range. West Virginia’s labor force participation rate remains among the lowest in the nation.
The point is clear: America faces serious challenges. It has for some time.
You can blame presidents, Congresses, political parties, entire generations, or the American people themselves. There’s plenty of responsibility to go around. That’s a conversation for another day.
Add conflict with Iran and the growing instability overseas, and the picture becomes even more troubling.
America remains a great nation, one worthy of pride and gratitude. One with a great and admirable history. But greatness isn’t a permanent condition. It requires maintenance. It requires continuing effort. It requires leadership. A focus on what matters most… reiterate what matters most.
Which brings me to the reflecting pool.
The average American does not care about the reflecting pool, Mr. President. Not now, anyway.
Fix it. Don’t fix it. Make it blue, keep it green, or paint it purple.
This isn’t about the money. It isn’t even about whether the repairs worked. You say vandalism caused the latest problems. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe both faulty work and vandalism – stop the check for the first, prosecute the last.
At this point, many Americans have stopped listening. It wasn’t something that required all the fanfare anyway. Reflecting pools are meant to create solemnity directed back at what they reflect – that purpose doesn’t lend itself to broadcast… a chance to boast about what you did and how it’s now better than ever before.
Sadly, we’ve heard more discussion about a reflecting pool than we’ve heard about many of the problems listed above — real problems affecting real people in real communities every single day.
Is it the president’s job to solve all of them? Of course not.
But leadership is about priorities. The president is not only the commander-in-chief, he is often the encourager-in-chief — the agenda-setter, the person who tells the country what deserves its attention. The president should not be the person who holds pressers about the reflecting pond, posts on social media about it or manages the work itself.
If you want to make America better, there is no shortage of worthy projects. Strengthen families. Improve education. Increase workforce participation. Fight addiction. Restore civic literacy. Address the debt. Pick one. My vote, start with the debt!
It’s difficult to care about a reflecting pool when so many other issues weigh so heavily on the country’s future.
And right now, America’s reflection isn’t what concerns most Americans. It’s America’s direction.