It must have been quite a week for President Obama. First, the high of being awarded a Nobel peace prize. Then, the ignominy of public disquiet over the award. Finally, the crushing blow of being compared with David Beckham by England boss Fabio Capello – suggesting perhaps that Aaron Lennon or Theo Walcott should have been first choice in the Oval Office. There is, however, no doubt about Obama’s oratory ability – so able to articulate a feeling of progress and (of course) hope. My colleague Jeff Masters yesterday directed me to one of his best:
“What’s troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics—the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial.”
Implication: that the huge societal challenges we face deserve a new politics – going beyond petty squabbles, or myopic focus on single issues and vested interest. Contemporary philosophers such as Michael Sandel and Amartya Sen agree, each in a fashion proposing we broaden our understanding of progress to encompass morality, wellbeing and collective social capacity.
These are big and complex issues, but are mirrored in all sorts of smaller ways. At the 2020 Commission, we are constantly wrestling with the need to re-frame the way we look at public services and the role of citizens, society and the state. But at the same time, we must be aware of the complexity of transformation; of distilling expansive rhetoric into coherent routemaps for change. From a practical point of view, the tension is similar: a coherent narrative and sense of purpose is a vital starting point, but this is a different intellectual process to developing specific policy proposals. The catch is that we need both – so expect some exciting and challenging new ideas to be floated on this blog over the next couple of months.
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Being based at the RSA has its benefits – and one is certainly being privy to a number of innovative and thoughtful research projects. Perhaps most exciting is a new partnership between the RSA and Peterborough City Council called ‘citizens of the future’. Check out Sam McLean’s blog for the lowdown on an initiative that threatens to combine big ideas with real social change.
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Last but not least – 2020 PST director Ben Lucas has a good piece in Local Government Chronicle reflecting on the political dividing lines emerging from the party conference season, asking what the practical implications of key speeches might be. You can read it here.
