I first saw Tom Brokaw talking about this historical moment as “a reset” when he was talking about the AIG bonuses on Meet the Press a month or so ago (I just happened to tune-in for the first time in ages).
Then today when I saw his op-ed in the New York Times start with the same concept I had to wonder, is he going to make this the theme of a new book?
DURING these uncertain times we’ve yet to hear a phrase with the resonance of Franklin Roosevelt’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” but there are a couple of minor-chord expressions that should have staying power.
One is the observation of Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, that “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Another comes from my boss, Jeff Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric, who has warned, “This is not a cycle; it’s a reset.”
(Video of Immelt in discussion is here, go to about 2:20. My previous admiring remarks on Immelt are here.)
Apparently Brokaw is pretty enamored with it the “reset” idea. He was talking about Immelt’s phrase as far back as January in an interview with Warren Buffett, and it came up in a Q&A with Time about his global warming documentary. Seems to be his universal idea:
Time: The recession is dominating our attention right now. But climate change is a problem whose consequences are serious, but always far off. Do you worry that we’ll lose focus on global warming?
Brokaw: Yes, but I do think there is focus on this. Rahm Emanuel has a great line [hmm]: “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Jeff Immelt at General Electric has another great line, that this isn’t a recession, but a reset. It’s a reexamination of how we’ve been living. Maybe the McMansion era is crashing to an end. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have a big house, but the ethos of what you need is changing.
By the way, keep in mind Immelt is Brokaw’s “boss” as long as GE owns NBC (as pointed out in the discussion with Buffett). I don’t know how much that fact directly influenced Brokaw’s fascination with the “reset” idea but it wouldn’t hurt grease the wheels of his cross-country journey documenting the lives of “everyday Americans” through the deep r[ec]ession (more).
And if Brokaw doesn’t write it, (though wouldn’t it be a fascinating complement/follow-up to The Greatest Generation?), Richard Florida already has one in the works called Reset: How the Economic Crisis Will Forever Change Our Economy, Society, and the Way We Live.
I’m assuming it will be based largely on Florida’s essay in the March Atlantic, “How the Crash Will Reshape America” (in which he quotes Paul Romer as saying “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste” — sound familiar?). The accompanying online interview with Conor Clarke was titled, yep, “The Great Reset.”
I’m trying to address the same problems in most of my recent posts. I tend to look at it on a bigger historical (and even metaphysical) scale but it comes down to the same basic challenges.
Despite my big-picture background (or because of it) I’m actually more interested in Tom Brokaw’s “everyday American” perspective on. His NYTimes op-ed specifically called out small-town government:
If the American people are tuned into the need to change the irresponsible, inefficient practices and systems that created those problems, why not enlist them to take the next step and radically change the antiquated public structures that exist beyond the Beltway? …
If we demand this from General Motors, we should ask no less of ourselves.
That’s where it starts: from the ground up, so to speak. Time for “the heartbeat of America” to live up to its billing.
And here in Canada, where we like to (and ought to) think of ourselves as setting a good example, how are “everyday Canadians” contributing?
And more specifically here in London, are we waiting for people elsewhere to congratulate us — or are our civic leaders proactively adapting to new economic realities and capitalizing on new technologies?
But forget the civic leaders. In the reset world, we’re all leaders — we all share the responsibility.
(Hat tip to Jonathan on “responsibility”: see comment to previous post.)
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