Failure™ Magazine

The End of the World as We’ve Known It?

Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America, by Kurt Andersen, Random House.

Review by Jason Zasky  Filed under Book Reviews

Kurt Andersen—author, culture critic, magazine journalist, and public radio host—is breezily optimistic about the future of America. In his view, expressed so thoughtfully in “Reset,” the current economic crisis represents a golden opportunity for the United States to get back “on the right track.” He reasons that the country has gone off the rails and self-corrected before, and we’ll just have to do it again.

It’s undoubtedly a good opportunity for Americans to embrace a bold new direction, but it’s not as inevitable as Andersen makes it seem. A substantial and increasingly hysterical minority of the population seems determined to resist change, even when it seems to be in our collective best interest to embrace it. (This is perhaps best exemplified by the vocal opposition to health care reform.)

Yes, the U.S. has stumbled many times in the past, only to come back stronger than ever. But consider the country’s recent track record in regard to change. Wasn’t everything going to be different after 9/11? Well, things were different ... for a brief interval, before the country slipped back into its old habits. It’s easy to envision the U.S. reprising its self-destructive ways when the economy comes back to life, whenever that may be.

Of course, Andersen is correct when he points out that, in certain respects, America has come a long way in the past few decades. For one thing, the country just elected a black president, something that was probably unthinkable 25 years ago. Yet it took eight years of abject failure for the populace to embrace a leader like Barack Obama, far too slow a reaction in a fast-moving world that requires deft and nimble adaptation to changing circumstances.

But the biggest obstacle to American renewal is undoubtedly corporate resistance, a factor that Andersen glosses over. Powerful corporate institutions have a vested interest in ensuring that things remain the same (obscene corporate bonuses are already back), even if it means the country is worse off as a whole. No doubt readers will have a feel-good moment when Andersen praises “the amateur spirit” of American entrepreneurs, but even the most intrepid individuals become risk-averse when they can’t obtain affordable health insurance and business policy favors the “big guys.”

Notably, in his concluding “keys to renewal,” Andersen opines that “the next couple of years is our window of opportunity for a carefully considered reset.” Unfortunately, careful consideration is not a hallmark of the American character, which Andersen describes—in the previous sentence, no less—as “incurably bipolar.” He also assumes that the country is entering a new era of “post-party-line common sense,” which will enable us to begin reinventing “hopelessly broken systems—in health care, education, climate change, and more.”

Perhaps I’m being a glass-half-empty stick-in-the-mud, but it’s difficult to reconcile Andersen’s mixed messages. It seems like the majority of Americans recognize the way things should be. Whether we have the collective patience, will, and forethought to get there is another story.