The Wake-Up Call: How the Pandemic has Exposed the Weakness of the West
ONE OF THE WEST’S GREAT STRENGTHS has been its talent for reinvention. Just when everything looks hopeless, it succeeds in regenerating itself, spurred on by new ideas, new technology and the threat of competition. Woken up, the West could do a lot, quite quickly. Our hope is that the pandemic, by exposing so many weaknesses, will force Western governments to embark on a sustained period of reform.
Any renewal must involve three ingredients: basic modernization; luring talented people back into public service; and focusing the state on what it does well. They are linked. An unmodernized state that tries to do everything (and therefore does lots of things badly) will never get good people to work for it — and without better people, the public sector doesn’t have a chance of successful reform.
The challenge now seems most similar to the one faced in the 19th century when a new liberal order of open competition and efficiency swept away a flabbier old order of patronage and corruption. Imagine that the two most formidable Anglo-Saxon politicians from that era, Abraham Lincoln and William Gladstone, were resurrected, fused together and elected to the White House on a platform of reforming government. What could ‘President Bill Lincoln’ do?
Our new president would combine the best of his two antecedents. Neither were perfect men — especially when young — but once they got to power they showed a willingness to cleanse government. From the ‘People’s William,’ Bill Lincoln inherits a drive to direct resources away from the old corruption of special interests and cash-for-perks towards those who really need them. From ‘Honest Abe’, he gets a desire to unite his country and rid it of the scourge of racial injustice.
Both men believed passionately in improving the lot of ordinary people — especially through education. President Bill Lincoln could be either a Republican or a Democrat — he is both a ‘left-wing’ social reformer and a ‘right-wing’ small-government man who believes in self-reliance.
So, let’s put the great man to work. In our 2020 book, we detail 13
