children won’t be able to afford college. Meanwhile, certain so-
cial and environmental problems continue to haunt us. Poverty
and drug addiction perpetuate an American underclass that fills
our prisons to overflowing, and the oceans continue to rise.
For a time, our economic worries were overshadowed by the
national trauma of 9/11, which caused virtually all Americans to
look at their lives and reconsider their priorities. The wrench-
ing accounts of doomed men and women calling their loved
ones from the Twin Towers to say good-bye were seared into
the nation’s consciousness. So were the images of ordinary peo-
ple whose control over their lives had been reduced, through no
fault of their own, to the decision of whether to be immolated
or jump a hundred stories to an equally certain death.
For the first time in decades, Americans seemed to see them-
selves as one nation, a single people united in their commitment
to democratic principles. Unfortunately, the genuine sense of
unity that emerged after the attacks did not lessen the nation’s
sense of alienation from many of its institutions. There was mis-
trust, in many quarters, of a government increasingly martial in
tone and eager to eliminate, at whatever cost, “an axis of evil”
embodied in Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Many Americans were in-
creasingly estranged from national leaders who seemed to use
terrorism as an excuse for hacking away at Constitutional pro-
tections. As Abigail Adams said, great suffering often engenders
great leadership, but pain does not guarantee it. And, after 9/11,
many Americans were left longing for leadership, as well as for a
time, not so long ago, when terrorism was as rare in America as
hunger. Yes, the nation had shared a tragedy, but that suffering
did not produce a common vision of what the United States
should be and how to achieve it. And we seemed to lack leaders
of sufficient stature to give us that vision.
Mastering the Context