In the slow news week between Christmas and New Year’s, those in the news business are fond of reflecting on the previous year’s top stories and developments. It’s an interesting and rewarding exercise.
Rather than merely listing the top stories, what lessons do they impart?
The top story in Maine in 2010 has to be the Republican takeover of the State House and Blaine House. The historically deep national recession affected Maine, causing perennial budget shortfalls and, for a time, double-digit unemployment. With one party definitively in charge of state government for the past eight years, voters had a clear target for their anger.
Democrats may be correct in arguing that former President George W. Bush and the GOP-controlled Congress had more to do with creating the crash, but voters seemed to have concluded that Democrats in Augusta had built a large, layered and generous state government. So large that when a funding crisis hit, it was difficult to ratchet down spending. So layered, that as the recession ended, the regulatory climate blocked recovery. And so generous to the impoverished that struggling middle-class Mainers resented the help others got. Even if these perceptions are not wholly supported by facts, they became the reality.
The lesson? When a fiscal crisis hits, those in power are responsible. Democrats should have been more empathetic to those hurt by the economy, bolder in initiatives that may have helped create jobs and more ruthless in downsizing government.
A related top story is how the recession-stoked anger played out nationally. The Obama administration got its overhaul of the health care system passed, expanding coverage nearly universally, and softening the blow of skyrocketing insurance premiums for businesses and individuals. It was a pledge the president made on the campaign trail, but somehow, the electorate seemed surprised that he actually pushed for and won the change he promised. Republicans, buoyed by winning control of the House of Representatives and gains in the Senate, are aiming to repeal the law. But what will they provide as a replacement, and will they be able to persuade the public that returning the power to insurance companies to deny coverage and hold virtual monopolies is a good outcome?
The lesson — sometimes, a legislative victory, even if widely panned by the public, begins to harden into concrete and is eventually embraced.
Two other top stories, the devastating earthquake in Haiti and the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, will continue to cause human misery. One was natural, the other man-made. The lesson? For all the mastery over life that technology provides, people are vulnerable to their environment.
Others: Government finally caught up with the views of those serving in the military and the public at large by ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The lesson — in the struggle between exclusion and inclusion, inclusion eventually wins. Yet, fear of foreigners remains, seen in the preemptive anti-immigration law in Arizona, the full-body scans and pat-downs at airports, and the Fox News-sponsored outrage about the “ground zero mosque.” The lesson? Suspicion is an easy sell.
Wisdom is a valuable commodity, yet it is available to all. Time will reveal who stockpiled the most from the 2010 crop.