For those of you who follow my (really, quite dull) personal trials and tribulations, I am happy to report that I got a job. I don't want to say too much about it - I believe in keeping these things separate - but let's just say all you need to know is in the title of this post.
One thing that I liked about my interview was that it was focused on evaluating ability to contribute to a team, something that's become a big selling point in the work world these days. People aren't "employees" anymore, they're "team members." The business bookshelf sags with hot tomes hawking ways to improve team morale, build a team mentality, make your teams work. It's turned professional coaches into business experts. And in some ways, it's more than a little disconcerting.
But as I thought about it this morning - I wake up thinking about the big issues; it's a serious flaw - I realized, it's the team metaphor in business that's doing in Republicans and the failed Presidency of George W. Bush, because there's no I in team.
Republicans staked their 25 year run at becoming a majority on the bedrock of "personal responsibility." Government, they argued, did too much and warped people's sense of having to take responsibility for their own situation. Welfare was a "handout" that encouraged laziness. Government jobs were "make work" positions that should be eliminated. Small business, where an individual worked hard and built something from the ground up, was romanticized. And corporate leaders became "rugged individualists" with bold ideas.
I think it's becoming safe to say that this notion has played itself out, and Americans are making it clear that they're rejecting an overemphasis on the individual at the expense of the group. And Republicans, torn between one and the other, cannot seem to adjust their rhetoric. On the one hand, the "social conservatives" have been pushing a notion of group dictates - that the group (Society) can tell the individual what to watch, how to behave, and when, even to ask questions. At the same time, economic policy has become a brutal exercise in throwing individuals to the wolves, with no group to support them or back them up. Social Security "reform" where the individual would be left to struggle with investing decisions and face the consequences of personal failure at retirement. "Welfare reform" that penalizes failure to find a job with the removal of financial supports to cover food and shelter. And now, "health insurance reform" that would throw individuals on the mercy of the insurance market when group policies - often through one's employer - help to reduce risk and lower costs to the insured.
If there's a reason Bush's health insurance proposal arrived so completely DOA, it's at least in part that it flies in the face of "team" rhetoric. And Bush himself is a prime example of this. The President and his handlers crafted a narrative for him in 2000 (one that conservative diehards have never given up on) that Mr. Bush is an "up by his bootstraps" guy who found his way in business after years of personal turmoil and then took his rugged individualism into politics. But of course, that's not true: Mr. Bush is a patrician son of wealth, whose money and connections protected him from having to face a series of personal failures and whose political success has been orchestrated by a team of loyalists who never question or challenge him directly. Mr. Bush isn't proof that the individual can surmount problems on his won and find success; he's proof that with enough support behind you, pushing you on, you can become anything you want to be. He has benefited from, well, a team focused on little more than ... him.
The President's failure has been to be the I in team: rather than listen to a team of learned elders who offered a vision for changing his approach on Iraq, Mr. Bush turned to his dysfunctional, fractious team of loyalists and crafted an alternative built around his own political needs. But he's not alone: the Scooter Libby trial, after all, is about Dick Cheney being the I in team, turning his most loyal aide into a scapegoat for an illegal act. Or take the Foley scandal, where the team of congressional leaders faced a crisis and proved that they were, really, about every man for himself. Or just look at The Abramoff scandal and the push for ethics reform - where personal aggrandizement takes precedence over something as basic as doing the people's business.
It's why I don't think Democrats, in some ways, can really mess up this opportunity - teamwork and the idea that we're all in this together is really in our DNA. Our recent successes have been about standing still for 25 years, patiently explaining, to anyone who would listen, that while we celebrate the individual, we know that it takes a village to raise a child; that we are at our best when we are helping those among us who can't help themselves; that we will all do best when we share our ideas, our wealth and our talent. And perhaps most of all, in these warlike times, that we must all make sacrifices to meet a common goal. Absent those sacrifices and that sense of a common goal, we are on the wrong path. There is no I in team. And Republicans will be in the wilderness a long time if they can't adjust their rhetoric and their mindset to a more team oriented approach.
Comments