M E R I D I A N M A G A Z I N E
Asking the Wrong Questions
By Richard Eyre
Editors' Note: The book The Three Deceivers, which is an expansion of what has been put in this column over the past year (see archives for samples) will be published and available to Meridian readers in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, Richard continues to write occasional updates designed to make us ask ourselves questions.
One way we can be deceived is to ask the wrong questions. The purpose of this column is not to offer answers, but to try to stimulate all of us to ask more questions, and, more importantly, to ask the right questions, the key questions, the core questions.
The trouble with asking the wrong questions is that it generally leads to the wrong answers. As a nation, we are now desperately in need of some political and economic answers, and I fear that the reason they seem so hard to come by is that we may be asking the wrong questions, or at least framing our questions in the wrong reality. Sometimes what asking the wrong questions means is simply that we didn't ask the best question, or that the questions we do ask clutter the landscape and keep us from focusing on the question. Three examples:
1. I think we asked the wrong questions in nominating our major party candidates. We asked who we liked, who was most like us, who had the most useful experience, who flip flopped, who was safe, who was a hero, who could protect America best, who could restore our image abroad, who was most genuine, who had the best body language. Not bad questions, just not the question. The question, the core, the key, is what does America (and the world) need most, and who can supply it. If that question had really been probed, we would have realized that in this time, it is economic and moral leadership that trumps everything else, and that we need a leader who can restore order and prudence to the monetary and fiscal and regulatory policies of this country and of the globe even as he or she connects what works practically to what is right morally. If that had been the focus, Mitt Romney would be the Republican candidate.
2. I think McCain asked the wrong questions in choosing his running mate. He asked who could excite the base, who could put some emotion in his campaign, who could tip the gender gap, who could be viewed as an outsider and reformer, who could balance his age, who could help him win. What he should have asked, the question, was who could complement his strengths and compensate for his weaknesses and who could step into the presidency. On the morning I heard about the Palin choice, I called Mitt and told him I thought he better get ready to run against Obama in 2012, because I felt that Palin would be a brief hit, and create a lot of curiosity, but that after people thought about it for a while they would be scared to death to have her a heartbeat away from the presidency with a president in his mid seventies and a cancer history. If she would always be vice president and never have to be president, I would be all for her. But McCain became hypocritical by running on experience and wisdom and choosing a running mate who is a beginner in both.
3 . I think the pundits and public alike are asking the wrong questions about the election as it now stands, and missing what this election is really about. Everyone thinks it is about race, or about experience, or about age/youth, or about conservative/liberal, or about gender, or about Iraq , or about the economy. I think that, more than any of those things, it is about temperament. McCain is impulsive, has a quick temper, and seems to act on quick instincts while Obama is extremely deliberate and analytical and cautions. Two extreme sides of the temperament spectrum. And either side could be problematic if it carries to a fault, just as either side could be advantageous depending on the situation and circumstances. We need to know more.
The other thing I think the election is about, that media is not picking up on much, is the global, impact-on-the-world, U.S. image abroad thing. Most places we go, people have written off the U. S. as a self-interested, narrowly-focused bully that cares little about the rest of the world. People would really give us another look (and another chance) if we elect someone as visually, ideologically and temperamentally different from Bush as Obama. This "fresh start with the rest of the world" could be very important. On the other hand, is McCain more capable of thinking with accurate global perspective. Like it or not, our election is about the world, not just about America , and we need to focus more on that question.
4. I think we are asking the wrong questions about the economy. How do we keep people spending and buying? How do we keep stocks and other investments from collapsing? How do we help people to continue to borrow? How do we ease up credit so things can expand? What kind of income tax reforms will best stimulate the economy? I think they are the wrong questions because they assume that spending and borrowing is what makes an economy vibrant and sustaining. When are we going to get over our debt and credit mentality? As individuals and as a country? Will it take a complete meltdown or another depression to bring us to our senses? The government lives irresponsibly, not balancing budgets, living on credit (Way too much of it from China ) and building a deficit of a size that could not even be imagined a couple of decades ago. And economists tell us to live the same way.....to spend more and use credit more so that we can "keep the economy going."
Well, what if strong economies are actually built on saving and investing and living within our means? On the macro of fiscal policy and on the macro of how individual families live? What if saving rather than spending is the key to keeping the economy going? What if delayed gratification and paying as you go and avoiding debt and building surpluses actually works for countries as well as for individuals? Why is no one giving this answer? Because no one is asking the right questions, and because no one thinks there is a real answer or a real way to change from a credit, deficit, spending oriented paradigm to a pay as you go, surplus, savings oriented mind set and ideal.
If we asked the right question, there might actually be a fairly simple answer. Stop taxing income and savings and start taxing spending. What about a "fair tax"....a national sales tax of 18% that would completely replace income tax? Things would cost more, but there would be no tax on income, no IRS, no tax lawyers as we know them, and not so many loophole-seeking accountants. Suddenly, (and I think it really would be sudden) people would spend less and save more. They would work harder because nothing they earned would be taxed. And then, maybe, miracle of miracles, the government itself would start to focus on paying as they go and idealizing a surplus rather than a rate of spending or level of debt.
5. (Let me see if I dare move from political and economic questions to spiritual ones) Are we asking the right questions about spreading the gospel and "reaching" the world?
We ask how to convert more people, and how to correct misconceptions about things like polygamy, and how to find more people to teach, and how to get more people to come to Church, and what our grooming and dress standards should be, and how to appeal to the world even as we reject its standards. Isn't the right question about what God wants for his children and about His purpose in creating this mortality? And isn't the answer to that question all about families? We were already His children before this earth, and already with Him. But we were not like Him in that we had not yet become parents or brought about our own families or been linked into an eternal chain that gives order and organization and eternal possibility to His family. Is the purpose of the Church, as President Lee said, to be the "scaffolding" with which we build eternal families?
If so, perhaps our core focus, of missionary work, of public relations, and of teaching and supporting each other, should be the building and strengthening of families. Might this paradigm have profound effect on how we pursue all three missions of the Church....proclaiming, redeeming, and perfecting. And while we know that the most profound way to strengthen a family is via membership and activity in the restored Church, there may be broader, more far reaching ways that we could do more to strengthen families for anyone and everyone, whether they have a current interest in the Church or not.
Now, what is additionally interesting is that, once we begin to ask the spiritual questions, their answers have impact on all other questions, including the political and economic ones. For example, the answers on question 5 may affect our answers on question 3 as we overlap and ask which candidate will do the most to protect and strengthen families.
Send me some feedback.
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