Sometimes the only way to succeed is to bite your tongue, swallow your pride, clean your slate, and start over again. I really don't enjoy writing abut politics, but it is those individuals who you and I trust to represent us and our forefathers' values. Do we all agree that it is those very politicians who failed to protect us? And if so, what can we do about it? A wise seer once said: "When things get tough, go back to the basics and find the answers there."
Here's a good analogy. Imagine having a marriage problem (some of us have been there and the latest survey reports that 70% of all marriages now fail). If you had gone back to the basics that included courting, bringing flowers, caring, sharing, wearing deodorant - you both would have had a much better chance of honoring the vows originally made. The same is true about your business. Many are having a rough time in the third year of the recession. And many who have survived admit to going back to the basics when you never looked at the clock, never skipped a summer Friday to bask at the beach, rose early in the morning and worked late. And guess what? When you began you were a leader, and the definition of a good leader is one who has been there and can lead by example. It is quite obvious that the people we have sent off to Washington are not good leaders. They don't identify with the governed (that's us) because they immediately become different with a different medical plan and retirement plan. How many of them have ever run a company? How many of them have ever served in the military? But we trust them to drop bombs on Libya and fight terrorists in Afghanistan.
Maybe it is time to go back to the basics. How many of those senators and congressmen can quote any part of the Declaration of Independence? Maybe that should be a prerequisite to being elected.
Here's the section they should have memorized and the part that you and I should recall from high school that was written in 1776 by our forefathers, many who fought and died so we could live in the land of the free and the home of the brave:
"These rights give us the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Governments are institutions among men deriving their powers from the consent of the governed (don't forget, that's us) whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government laying its foundation on such principals and organizing its powers in such as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
So there are the basics. If we want to succeed as a nation we should be figuring out a way to start over again. Any ideas?
By the way, the beginning of our government crumbling goes back to the great eighties during Reaganomics when those of us in business made more money than we could spend. Unfortunately, it led to a horrible 3-year recession. Reagan was the first president to start deregulating, and all his replacements followed suit. And those of us who passed English in high school remember that regulation means law. How would your town do if you abolished the local police force? It is obvious that if you eliminate laws, you will eventually create chaos. Each president after Reagan deregulated more and more and more creating people like Maddoff and a sleepy SEC that led to the most recent recession and chaos. My guess is that our forefathers knew that the country needed regulations and wrote a bunch of them. Have they all been ditched and shouldn't we be reading about our government beginning to reinstate some of them?
Roland Hopkins is the founder of The New England Real Estate Journal, Norwell, Mass.