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8

The Problem with Hope: WSJ Global View writer, Bret Stephens, nails it & candidates who lean on it too heavily


This excerpt from Bret Stephens’ Global View column in today’s Wall Street Journal, “Great (American) Expectations,” (alternate link here) encapsulates and provides excellent argumentation as to the problem of hope.  We need hope, but having hope – just like wanting change – should not be and is not an end in itself.

There is great virtue in the American way, which expects CEOs to perform on a quarterly basis, presidents and Congresses to reinvent politics in 100 days, generals to wipe out opponents in 100 hours without taking significant casualties, doctors to save life and limb every time, search engines to yield a million results in less than a second, and so on. There is also great virtue in the belief that what is bad can be made good, and that what is good can be made great, and that what is fractionally less than great is downright awful.

But these virtues can spawn vices. One is impatience. Another is a culture of chronic complaint. A third is the belief that every problem has a solution, that trial is possible without error, that risks must always be zero, that every inconvenience is an outrage, every setback a disaster and every mishap a plausible basis for a lawsuit.

It is often said that the Bush administration’s effort to bring democracy to the Middle East wasn’t so much a case of American idealism as it was of hubris. That may yet prove true. But is it any less hubristic to think the enterprise was ever going to be brought off without blundering time and again? It’s a thought that ought to weigh especially heavily on Mr. Obama, dream candidate of America’s great expectations.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:41 pm January 8th, 2008 in Politics 

Comments

2 Responses to “The Problem with Hope: WSJ Global View writer, Bret Stephens, nails it & candidates who lean on it too heavily”

  1. 1 Anon on January 8th, 2008 6:01 pm

    “The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.”
    – Will Durant

  2. 2 Jill Miller Zimon on January 12th, 2008 9:30 am

    Thanks, Anon. Excellent, spot-on quote.

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