In 1980, candidate Ronald Reagan, in the last debate with President Jimmy Carter, looked into the camera and asked the question that would later become famous as one of the great political milestone questions of our generation. Reagan asked, “Are YOU better off today than you were four years ago?” It was a question that candidate Bill Clinton would again ask the American people during his last debate with then President George H. W. Bush. It was the question that would come to define the next 30 years. It was no longer about “us” as a nation, it was about “me” and what have you done for me lately.
With that single question, President John Kennedy’s call to action (“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”) was casted aside. For the next 30 years, after Reagan, every situation would be approached by Americans with the thought of what’s in it for me, the individual. The “I got mine, you get yours the best way you can” attitude has driven every social reform effort during this period, and that includes the current healthcare debate.
The other night President Obama asked the Congress to consider not what is in it for the individual, but rather what is in it for the collective – what is in it for us as a nation. Why? Because we as a nation are defined what we as a people do to (and for) each other; not just by what I do as an individual for me.
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields has written a wonderful essay on what he calls the end of the “me” generation. Shields is much more eloquent than I will ever be in this space and he makes my case better than I will. Regardless of your personal politics (and politics is personal), his essay is worth reading – and worth pondering because in the end – you are your brother’s keeper. And the other night, the President of the United States reminded us of that.