America
is nearing the end of its most expensive political campaign season ever. According to the Washington Post, Presidential campaigns and the super PACS that
support them will spend more than $2 billion by Election Day. Add in the Congressional races and the
total climbs to approximately $5.8 billion, and could go higher (http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/08/2012-election-will-be-costliest-yet.html). That is a staggering number.
I
would guess that most of us are tired of, if not dismayed by, the strident
tone, the inaccuracies, and the cumulative, relentless negativity of the
campaigns. All too frequently what we see, hear, and read during the campaigns
appears to have the purposes of generating fear, not hope; of creating
divisions, not unity; of fomenting hatred, not kindness; of obscuring the
truth, not revealing it; of sowing confusion, not understanding. I am concerned that the end result of
such campaigns is a weaker America, not a stronger one. It seems to me that, if
America is to retain its global leadership, and be a model of representative,
democratic government for the world, then our government needs to function
effectively and well. However, it
appears that we are devoted to spending billions to insure just the opposite.
A
grave example of our current inability to govern ourselves is the looming
fiscal cliff over which we are poised to leap in January 2013. The consequences
of the mandated, massive reductions in discretionary spending will be truly
devastating to America’s economic prosperity and global leadership. Why? Because the scheduled reductions of
$57.5 billion over 2013-2017 in America’s funding for research and development
(see http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/fy2013/SeqBrief.shtml)
will inflict wide-spread and debilitating damage to our nation’s capabilities
in science, engineering, and technology.
Unless
amended, research and development in the Department of Defense, Homeland
Security, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health,
the Department of Commerce, NASA, the Department of Energy, the Environmental
Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of the
Interior will be reduced substantially.
America’s security and prosperity will be damaged for years to
come.
This
threat is a product of the debilitating, uncompromising partisanship generated
in part by the last election. And
now we appear to be spending billions in an all-out effort to make our situation
worse, many of our citizens more alienated, and our competitive position
weaker. Meanwhile, India, China, the EU and others are pouring resources into
research, development, and higher education.
What should be done? Well first, we should insist that the
President and Congress build a bipartisan solution to avoid the mandated budget
reductions and tax increases set to begin in 2013. It is, after all, exactly
what they intended – that these potentially devastating steps would create
powerful incentives to craft an acceptable budget compromise. I do not know
what the most effective solution to the current poisonous election climate
might be. But no one ever solved a problem without admitting it existed. Let’s
do that, and then work together on the solution. I think America’s colleges and
universities can play an important role in crafting the solution. We should intensify our efforts to
promote and facilitate reasoned debate on America’s policy options. We should advocate
strengthening the roles of critical analysis, scientific data, and accurate
information in decision-making and policy development. And we should strive to build the kinds
of communities on our campuses where discourse and debate are civil,
responsible, and respectful. Our
research universities have helped America solve large problems in the past and
we can do so again.
