America's Second Half

The Chrysler Super Bowl commercial featuring Clint Eastwood has certainly generated considerable discussion. Unfortunately, most of it has been about whether Eastwood and the commercial were a promo for Obama and his administration. Eastwood, who according to his own report has always voted for Republican candidates for president, agreed to do the commercial, I would assume, not because he was concerned that Obama wouldn't be reelected, but because of the polarization in this country and the failure of the American people to work together as a team. As I see it, the commercial was about resilience, the ability to manage adversity, to bounce back, about the American people being able to work together in a cooperative way, as a team, in creating solutions to our economic and social problems.

The commercial was a realistic portrayal of the challenges that we are facing and a comparison of the challenges to the challenges that one city, Detroit, faced a few years ago. The key is attitude. The problems that we are confronting can be solved. They have been solved in the past. They are not permanent and do not have to be pervasive. They do not have to destroy us. Wasting our time pointing the finger of blame at each other is not going to help us move ahead. Working together as a team and focusing on what our strengths are and what we have accomplished in the past will move us forward. We are all in this together. Our fates are intertwined. It is time we started behaving in ways that reflect this reality.