Person of the Year-First Half 20102010-06-07

Had fate not thrown Winston Churchill into the middle of World War II, he likely could have made a living as a sidekick to Milton Berle and regular on the Catskill summer circuit. In addition to his rapier like wit, Churchill understood Americans better than any other world leader before or since.

About America in 2010, Churchill might very well have reprised an observation he first made over 70 years ago: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing--after they’ve tried everything else.”

This feeling has stuck with me for the last few weeks as I’ve been watching the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico unfold, and was crystalized when an Australian political friend asked me to send her links to any candidate websites emphasizing jobs. Trouble was, I couldn’t think of a single one.

We're In the midst of the worst domestic economy in decades and perhaps the worst environmental crisis in our nation’s history, yet leaders in the corporate boardrooms and halls of Congress seem to be incapable of addressing the most basic questions of millions of out of work Americans, the millions more who have lost homes to foreclosure or their retirement savings to Gordon Gekko’s heirs on Wall Street or how things went so wrong in the Gulf?

It’s as if the screw that held our nation’s collective centrifuge together has come undone, and we are spinning out of control in random directions, grasping at irrelevant answers and listening to ideas that defy gravity (or logic) rather than just picking up the screw and tightening it back up before the lid blows off.

Churchill would have sat smugly on his side of the pond listening to Republicans in Congress claim the BP mess is a result of Big Government run amok (as if less regulation would have caught BP’s previous 170 OSHA violations), and appreciated the irony of Congressional Democrats from coal mining and oil drilling states selling the notion of pumping carbon pollution back inside the earth just like a smoker inhales that Marlboro deeply into his lungs (with no ill effects).

The fact is, whether its banking, housing, energy, the economy or the environment, our nation’s elite has come up with every conceivable masquerade to these problems except the one that will most likely start us back towards recovery: the truth.

Lawmakers of both parties shirk from this watershed moment to have an honest conversation with their constituents in coal mining and oil drilling states about our energy future and how it relates to our economy.

Environmentalists won’t concede that ending deep water oil drilling would require 10 million electric vehicles on the road, which in turn would require us to burn more coal to generate the electricity in the short term.

BP and the other oil companies have told the public repeatedly proclaimed they could fix any spill that could conceivably happen (not that one ever would), while Goldman Sachs veterans in the Administration have shockingly steered the president away from a financial reform bill that would break up their “too big to fail” oligarchy.

Is it any wonder why this spring voters throughout the country have tossed incumbents of both parties into the middle of the oil soaked ocean, and the stock market is plunging once again on fears that no one knows what the hell they are doing?

In the midst of this scrap heap, the unlikeliest of heros has emerged. A man who no one pays to see and most people don’t even like; who committed an unforgivable mistake, and broke Tom Hanks’ edict, “There’s no crying in baseball.”

Jim Joyce has been umpiring major league baseball games for 22 years, including two World Series, but you’d be hard pressed to find even devoted baseball fans who knew his name before last week. His mistake may push the unemployment number even higher as umpires get replaced by video cameras. So why is he so special?

For the non-baseball fans among you, Joyce distinguished himself not by his calls on the field, but his conduct off it. After mistakenly calling a runner ‘safe’ in the bottom of the 9th inning, denying Detroit Tigers pitcher Armondo Galarraga one of the rarest feats in baseball--a perfect game--Joyce didn’t disappear into the night or behind a bland statement issued from Major League Baseball. He faced the music.

Upon reviewing the video, Joyce immediately went to the Tigers locker room to apologize to Galarraga. He then faced the media, telling them in no uncertain terms “I blew it,”  “I’m sorry,” and “I cost that kid a perfect game.” There were no qualifiers about how players had previously voted him one of the best umpires in the game or subordinate clauses justifying his mistake; just a heartfelt apology. To his credit, Galarraga was magnanimous in his acceptance.

So what’s the link between Jim Joyce, BP CEO Tony Hayward and his cohorts in board rooms around the world, the President of the United States, members of Congress and smart public relations?

It’s this:

Regardless of whether you are a Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jew or atheist; everyone has a version of the Golden Rule. Most kids learn by the age of five about treating others the way you would want to be treated, and saying “I’m sorry” when you make a mistake or hurt someone. It’s what makes the world go around and allows civilization to progress.

Contrast Joyce with Tony “I want my life back!” Hayward, who took seven weeks after eleven of his employees died in the Deepwater Horizon disaster to say those two words on camera. Worse, he still hasn’t admitted what is painfully obvious to everyone else around the world: there is no Plan B to cap the well because deepwater drilling is a science experiment, and we are the mice. If we want cheap gas, this is the price we have to pay.

Compare Joyce with Sarah Palin who is spinning the inexplicable (and math challenged) meme across social media networks that environmentalists are to blame for the oil spill because they opposed opening up ANWR to more drilling.

Match Joyce’s simple words against the sobering silence from the usually eloquent Barack Obama, who has been unwilling to use this crisis and the bully pulpit of the presidency (as did his predecessors) to level with the American people about the true costs of our 100-year addiction to fossil fuels, and how he intends to move us towards a sustainable, renewable energy economy that unleashes the next century of American innovation.

I don’t know what Jim Joyce’s educational background is, his business acumen, his political affiliation or if he even votes; but I do know this: given a choice between the most popular umpire in the game who demonstrates integrity through his mistakes, or corporations and politicians across this country with record low approval and trust ratings because they are naked in their self-delusion, Mr. Churchill wouldn’t have needed a second puff on his beloved Romeo y Julieta before announcing which American he could count on.

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