| Gordon Gekko, left played by Michael Douglass, better exemplifies the U.S. than John Wayne, Scarborough writes. | AP Photo/20th Century Fox |
| My mom and dad were born in the middle of the Great Depression, came of age during World War II and graduated college when Eisenhower was president. American power was at its zenith, millions of troops were joining the work force, our old rivals’ factories lay in ruins and interstate highways were springing up across the USA. America’s remarkable ascent in the middle of the 20th century framed my parents’ worldview while I was growing up in towns ranging from northwest Florida to upstate New York. Regardless of my family’s financial challenges, my mother and father always believed that in America there were no such things as short cuts, hard work was always rewarded and the good guys always won in the end. Dad was a true-blue member of what historian Garry Wills called John Wayne’s America. But unlike Wills, Dad saw no dark undertones in a country that had blessed him with a job, a home in the suburbs and a Buick in the driveway. Even when Dad was unemployed for 18 months, his faith in America never wavered. He still believed that hard work and prayer could knock down any obstacle standing in his way. I remember our Sunday mornings in Meridian, Miss., when Dad was searching for a good-paying job while Mom was trying to help pay the bills working as a music teacher and church organist. The route that took us from our neighborhood to First Baptist Church in Meridian took us down a long, winding street called Country Club Drive. It was the kind of street you would see in most Southern towns in 1970, with beautiful homes framed by perfectly manicured lawns. The garages of those houses usually held more Cadillacs than Buicks, and the golf course that wrapped around that neighborhood was the type my brother and I were never allowed to play on because our family had no chance of becoming members. Today, I still remember those Sunday morning trips to church — not because my parents were striking out at the inequities of a system that created such economic winners (them) and losers (us) — but because of what my mom would say as we drove past the glorious homes of doctors, bankers and lawyers. “You see that house, Joey?” “Yes ma’am.” “If you work hard in school and keep fighting every day to improve yourself, you can live in a place like that when you grow up,” Mom would say with admiration in her voice. My Mom and Dad believed in the American Dream even when they were dealt a pretty bad hand themselves. And their faith in America paid off, not only for themselves but for their children as well. I spent this past weekend driving through neighborhoods much like the type my parents took me through on those Sunday mornings so long ago. But the large homes with driveways filled with Mercedes and BMWs seemed like relics from a different age — much like the $1,500 shoes that The New York Times recently reported were flying off the shelves of certain Manhattan boutiques. The images of these massive homes and $100,000 cars seemed to clash with the morning headlines announcing a downgrade of the United States’ credit rating and the death of 30 U.S. troops in an endless, expensive war. And while America stumbles toward default, millions of Americans are unemployed and the middle class keeps getting squeezed. In late 2009, Business Week reported that the divide in corporate America was only getting worse: “While we’re seeing record-low budgeting for base salaries, we’re seeing record-high budgeting for bonuses.” The article showed evidence that CEO bonuses were at their highest levels in the 33 years the data have been recorded. “What’s counterintuitive,” according to a compensation expert interviewed by Business Week, “is that the highest level of funding for bonuses is occurring in the heart of the recession.” “Counterintuitive” seems to be a bit of an understatement. Shortsighted and stupid better describes a trend that cannot be seen as good for the long-term health of America’s economy. While these income disparity trends were bad under George W. Bush, they have only gotten worse over the last three years. Since 1970, executive pay has increased 430 percent while workers’ wages have crept up at a pace that barely kept up with inflation. The average executive’s pay has jumped over that time period to 158 times that of the average worker’s pay in those companies. It’s no wonder that the top 0.1 percent of income earners get richer by the day while millions of Americans are seeing their situations get worse. This is not John Wayne’s America. This is Gordon Gekko’s America. In fact, I’m pretty sure that if the Duke faced one of these CEOs in a John Ford film, he’d kick some ass and force the leech to start treating his workers fair. And you can bet that my Republican father would be cheering him on from the front row of the theater. That’s not to say that Dad would ever want the government to step in and tell companies what to pay their executives. He wouldn’t — not in a million years. But he would ask what became of the America that he knew, where working hard and playing by the rules always paid off. This weekend I began to wonder, 40 years after those Sunday morning drives, whether parents across the country still embrace the American Dream with the evangelical fervor that made a 7-year-old boy sitting in the back of a Buick believe that in America, anything is possible. A guest columnist for POLITICO, Joe Scarborough hosts “Morning Joe” on MSNBC and represented Florida’s 1st Congressional District in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001. |
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