Looking up

  
Column by David Reynolds
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Now let’s see if I’ve got this right. We are just into the new year and the sky has not yet fallen. Yes, I know, no one actually predicted that the clouds would fall. Nevertheless, there were those who kept saying that whatever keeps the human race on a solid footing – be it good manners or gravity – may have left us.

So they set the stage. While the sky did not fall – they said that everything else would. First, let’s go back to March 6 of last year. The pessimists, those who make a living predicting every year the return of the Great Depression, were looking pretty good. They predicted bad tidings, except for Christmas day when the markets are closed. Of course, the pessimists were wrong. On the last day of 2009 it was the bulls with the smiles. The bears? Well, you know what bears look like.

Another example on the economic front. Following World War II there were the same fears as today. Therefore Congress passed The Full Employment Act of 1946, cosponsored by my favorite Democrat, the happy warrior, Sen. Hubert Horatio Humphrey. In 1978 when the economy was again looking down and unemployment was an unacceptable 6.1 percent the goal was to reach full employment – defined as 4.0 percent unemployment – not zero!

So, let’s look at today’s jobs picture in terms of the law, Public Law 79-304 to be precise. The latest national unemployment rate is 10 percent. The pessimists love that high number. The White House simply tries to ignore it. However, Virginia’s current unemployment is 6.4 percent. Thus our Commonwealth cuts the bleak national picture by almost a third! As an optimist, I prefer the Virginia number. Or put it this way, our state’s unemployment is only 2.4 percent above full employment of 4 percent. Meanwhile, my pollyanna friend goes one step further. She likes to say that Virginia has a 97.6 percent employment rate. But if everyone had her optimistic view, Bob McDonnell would not be governor of Virginia. His jobs campaign would have crashed.

Who are these pessimists? Pessimists are fine folks. They just don’t understand what makes life tick. They look down. They can’t look up. While it is almost a certainty that something bad will happen during one’s lifetime, those odds are far less important than what one does after that bad break occurs. To a pessimist it is more important that on Christmas Day Northwest Flight 253 took off from Amsterdam with a terrorist aboard than the fact it landed safely in Detroit with no loss of life. How about you? Do you focus on the 29 (or more) terrorist plots which have been hatched inside our borders over the past eight years? Or do you only care that they all laid an egg?

Whatever your answer, it is very difficult to ignore that what has made this country great is optimism. With it you can light a candle; there is no need to cuss the darkness. Americans admire optimists. They are the folks who respond to our 911 emergency calls. They are our unsung heroes. Yet their names are not as well known as those of the victims we hear and read about everyday. Maybe that is why I turn to the sports section after skimming the front page. Sports are filled with heroes. Victims are never profiled. And there are only playing fields, no killing fields.

As you can gather, as an optimist, I have a problem with pessimists. But pessimists have their own problems. Two, in fact. One is that they may be wrong. And no one likes to be wrong. The other problem is that pessimists are sometimes right.

Now you can see why I decided to take off my dark glasses when I came to paradise to join your large unorganized local optimist club. If you are still not a member please join. There are no dues and no by-laws. Just a bunch of smiling folks who don’t believe the sky will fall tomorrow. Or at any time during 2010.

Nonetheless, this is a free country. Therefore we must allow pessimists their right to their own opinions. However, they are not entitled to their own facts.

I will make a deal with you. Make your predictions for 2010. Make it a long list. Then I will make mine. It will have but one item with the only thing I care about. Yet I will be 100 percent right, and you will be lucky to score a 50. My prediction: The sun will come up tomorrow. How do I know? I’ll be looking up.

Have a great year.