I have often been described as a visionary, one who sees things before others do.  It’s a very astute characterization. Being visionary does not always mean being correct, although I have been more right than wrong, but it does mean that the more my assessments and forecasts vary from how others see the world, the more stressful and difficult it is for me to persuade them.

One of my favorite TV shows of all time, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, frequently dramatized the message that people who saw the world differently from others often experienced difficulty and, in some cases, tragedy.  Two of my favorite episodes that made this point powerfully were “Terror at 20,000 Feet” starring a young William Shatner as an airplane passenger who sees gremlins trying to take apart an airplane wing while the plane is in flight, and “The Howling Man” in which an American is recounting a story to his housekeeper about why he is imprisoning a man whom he says is the devil.  In both cases, the passenger and the American seem psychotic and their perspective is disregarded.  In both cases, at the end of the show, they are proven right.

Thankfully, no one has ever accused me of being psychotic.  Unlike the William Shatner character, I did not get carted away in a straightjacket, and, unlike the American in “The Howling Man” the consequences of others not believing me did not result in the devil being unloosed upon the population.  Nevertheless, my experiences have been challenging.

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Not surprisingly, since this is the first anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration, and the special U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts has produced a result that seemed inconceivable six weeks ago, a Republican victory, many people have asked my opinion of President Obama’s performance.

I met the President four different times before he was elected, three of those times at National Urban League events. President Obama struck me as a person with virtually unlimited growth potential and tremendous intelligence and character, and I still believe he has those qualities.

At the same time, I remind myself that he had no executive experience of any significance before he secured his first executive job, being President of the United States.  I expected him to make some rookie mistakes because of his inexperience as a chief executive, and he has.

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I was struck by the parallels between a story published this past week and an event I recalled from the recent baseball Hall of Fame voting.  The story appeared in the Saturday, January 9, article in The New York Times entitled “Unions Rally to Oppose a Proposed Tax on Health Insurance.”  The event was the beginning of free agent negotiations between Marvin Miller, the lawyer for the Players’ Union, and the baseball owners in the 1970’s, an event discussed at some length this past week as commentators correctly noted that the Hall of Fame voters’ decision to deny Miller admission is a grave injustice.

What do these two situations have in common?  In both cases, a party to a dispute values continuation of the status quo and control more than they do economic benefit.

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I am going to make some end-of-the-year observations about the way I see the political system, the economy, and our society evolving.

Many elected officials do not have the political will to address fundamental structural economic and political issues.  We built an economy after World War II promising middle class wages for all Americans, but without the foundation of skills and educational capabilities to make such promises sustainable.  Public sector labor unions and unions in heavily politicized private sector industries like the automobile industry, successfully negotiated collective bargaining agreements allowing people with very low skills and educational attainment to secure middle class wages and benefits, and protections against downsizings, even as our economy has had to become more globally competitive.

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