The Insufficiency of Hope

Hope is a wonderful thing—as anyone who has ever experienced firsthand the effect of a positive attitude on surviving life-threatening disease and its treatment can attest.

It’s this recognition of Hope’s power and inherent goodness that leads to its universal acceptance as a worthy ideal, and to the perception of those who invoke it as righteous and altruistic. But, even more important than those factors, it’s Hope’s intrinsic nebulous, immeasurable, unprovable nature that make it a worthy companion on the campaign trail. So, it’s no accident that “The Man from Hope” and “The Audacity of Hope” were rallying themes for both of the most recent successful Democratic presidential candidates.

However, no matter what else it might be, Hope is not an economic recovery plan—nor will it ever be. Hope might garner a lot of 'street cred' along the campaign trail where vagaries and style trump substance, but it doesn’t get the job done in the Oval Office where the nation’s complex, multi-dimensional problems demand specific, comprehensive, and well-conceived plans and solutions.

While nothing tried so far has worked to slow, much less reverse, the economic slide toward the next not-so-Great Depression, there’s always Hope. But that’s the funny thing about Hope—while we may always have it, when it’s all we have left, we don’t even have that.

Copyright © 2009, point05
(www.pt05.blogspot.com)
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