Month: July 2018

President Trump recently proposed a $1.5 trillion infrastructure program. It’s generally a good idea but infrastructure alone will not produce long-term inclusive growth. To achieve that, America instead needs a comprehensive economic development strategy. That means struggling communities must invest in many different types of capital: infrastructure, health, education, and small business development.

Whether in urban Baltimore, rural Appalachia, or the open west, stagnation and poverty aren’t caused by a singular lack of infrastructure, health, education, or jobs. Struggling Americans face deficits in all. High-poverty counties in the United States have a lower life expectancy than many developing countries. Education is poor, unemployment is high, and infrastructure is inadequate.

Contrast this with regions that are booming. For example, New York City has a dynamic school system, a thriving job market, and the nation’s best public transportation. While jobs are the most important intervention, they’re not a magic bullet. Different development sectors reinforce each other. You cannot take advantage of job opportunities if you’re not healthy or if you don’t have the right education.

This theory is well tested. In the field of international development, where I work, we operate from the principle that multi-sectoral programs synergize for sustainable growth. This strategy enabled the 20th century development miracles of Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, among others. These countries grew from poverty to wealth by investing in their people alongside infrastructure and businesses.

This was also America’s original development strategy; we once led the world in education. It likewise guided the Marshall Plan that helped rebuild Europe after World War II. We must rediscover this strategy. And local communities should lead the effort. Local ownership fosters employment and a sense of purpose while optimizing the investments for local needs. One community might need infrastructure; another needs a drug treatment clinic; a third needs a high school; and a fourth could need all three.

How can we fund this proposal? Large government-funded projects are too inefficient. The stimulus legislation of 2009 found too few “shovel-ready projects” and overhauling national health care has proved contentious. The federal government’s only comparative advantage is size, so it should merely provide ample funds.

Enter the states. Governors and mayors have strong local credentials and incentives to deliver. States could submit proposals for federal funding for specific projects, augmented by state money. President Obama’s successful education initiative— Race to the Top— followed this model. So does the successful Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

To fund these projects, public-private partnerships can leverage new and old private capital and talent, spur private sector job growth, and reduce taxpayer burden. Such a strategy must target the whole country. Programs that serve everyone— rather than a particular race or class— promote unity and sustainable support.

Additionally, these projects must generate real return. Fortunately, initiatives that produce returns abound. For example, the economic return from treating a community’s opiate addiction is twelve dollars for each dollar invested. Quality education and infrastructure are similarly profitable. Family planning is also a crucial investment. The poorest areas of America have the highest birth rates. This stresses the already overburdened health and school systems, and increases competition for lower-skilled jobs. Our challenges today seem staggering, but America has recovered from worse. Economic development theory works, and the United States boasts the best record in world history. Now, we just have to execute.

Rob Cohen is a physician, Army veteran and international development practitioner. His book, “Boom without Bust: How Humans Can Solve Slow-Motion Emergencies” will be published in 2019. Follow @RobCohenMD.

Though the president still has many supporters, there is a growing consensus, especially as the Trump-initiated trade war heats up, that he does not have their best interests in mind, never mind the best interests of the nation as a whole.

While I think I understand why so many people voted for Trump, my sympathy does not extend to the man himself, whose emotional repertoire appears to be the narrow range between meanness and self-pity.

As his first summit with Vladimir Putin approaches, though we do not have certainty about the possibility of active collusion, one cannot help but recall Lenin’s phrase “useful idiot,” by which Lenin meant anyone who could be manipulated to serve the ends of the Soviet state.

To borrow another well-known phrase, this time from the late Senator Moynihan, Trump has “defined deviancy down.” Gradually we have come to tolerate behavior in a leader that was formerly enough to derail a candidacy, if not leading to outright trial by law.

Whether Mr. Trump will or will not be able to serve out his term, it is not too soon to learn some lessons about what we seek and what we want to avoid in candidates for the presidency. In no particular order, here follows a simple and obvious list, clarified by way of contrast with the person presently occupying the office:

• A president needs to be a national model for truth-telling, encouraging and validating the scientific method, and making policy based upon experimentally validated data.

•A president needs a secure, private, inner-directed self-sense that transcends their image in the media, a self-sense that includes a solid ethical compass.

•A president needs to ameliorate, not exacerbate, conservative-progressive polarization, and consistently emphasize what all of us have in common as Americans, like equality of opportunity and equality under the law. The president that follows Trump will need special skills to promote healing between pro- and anti-Trump factions.

•A president needs to understand the racism, which is one of America’s original sins, so that they can actively encourage the principle that our diversity makes us stronger.

•Anyone who wins the presidency will inevitably possess a healthy ego, but presidents must sublimate their self-confidence into a humble awareness of their position as servant leader, which views citizens as ends rather than instruments.

•A president needs good listening skills. Most of America’s difficulties, domestic or international, have in common some kind of failure to listen. Crude bullying, such as opposition to a U.N. breastfeeding resolution because it threatens the profits of baby formula corporations, is surely not what our country wants to be known for around the world.

•A president needs to separate from business interests clearly and absolutely while in office.

•Presidents need authentic life experience that has tested them. My friend Adam Cote ran for the governorship of Maine. While serving the National Guard, he was deployed to Bosnia, Afghanistan and finally Iraq, where he began an orphanage and established an effective program that adopted Iraqi villages. Five minutes in Adam’s presence is sufficient to demonstrate that his motivation for running is public service, not power. The testing experience doesn’t have to be military; it could be any trial by fire that seasons a person.

•Presidents need a sense of humor,

especially about themselves.

•Presidents need to be scholars of the lessons of history, to avoid repeating past mistakes.

•A president needs to be strong enough to push back against establishment groupthink from whatever political

direction, such as the momentum of American techno-colonialism and militarism. Presidents can be a bulwark against the tail of unlimited military spending wagging the dog of sensible policy.

•Irrespective of party, presidents need to understand the great global challenge of environmental stress, and the imperative for greater international cooperation to help the planet through to a place where humans have learned to sustain the commons that is the life-support-system for all.

•Presidents must understand that many of our contemporary challenges are trans-national, and that the delicate structures of international law must be gradually strengthened. This will unquestionably benefit America’s security in the long term.

•Presidents need discernment. As my father used to say, quoting Leo Rosten: “First rate people hire first rate people. Second rate people hire fourth rate people.”

Of course, every trait that makes a good president also makes a good civically engaged citizen. It would seem we get the presidents we deserve (though most of the Trump voters I know are much more interesting than either the liberal press stereotype of a Trump voter or than Trump himself).

Even if at a very high cost President Trump may have done our country at least one valuable service. If we have learned the right lessons, we will tolerate a little less the political obfuscations of the mean-spirited, the petty, the mealy-mouthed, the smugly entitled (in both mainstream political parties), and still less the garrulous narcissism taking up all the air in the room at present. There is an opening, if we can encourage it,

for a more disinterested, honest political conversation. I know I will be looking among the emerging candidates for at least some of the qualities listed above— and that, I’m afraid, means I need to exemplify those qualities myself.

Winslow Myers, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is the author of “Living Beyond War: A Citizen’s Guide” and serves on the Advisory Board of the War Prevention Initiative.