A Colorado Low

The Reagan revolution generally has stifled the era-of-limits talk of recent years by politicians like Jimmy Carter and Jerry Brown. The popular political mood now is that if the United States is strong and prosperous, the future will take care of itself. Not everyone may actually believe that, but the alternative is not a very popular option to consider. Espousing pessimism about the future of the nation certainly is not the best way to get elected to public office in the mid-1980s. Naysayers are invited to keep quiet.

There is, however, one politician who insists on talking about limits and the problems of the future. Colorado Gov. Richard D. Lamm, a Democrat now in his third and final term in office, has just written a book entitled “Mega-Traumas, America at the Year 2000.” It is a book with two endings. One is grim. The other is not so grim. In one scenario, the United States muddles into a state of multiple crises that ultimately can be managed only through such traumatic actions as severe limits on the provision of health care, the issuance of a substitute currency for the dollar, the walling off of decayed cities and rationing of energy.

The second scenario is the optimistic one, in which a Rooseveltian new President in the 1990s goads the nation into rigorous, disciplined actions to overcome the governmental excesses of the past and to stave off a breakdown of society. Lamm notes that his fiction-like settings do not constitute a prediction of what will happen, but a warning of what might unless the nation faces up to its problems and takes the tough road of reform.

Some will ridicule the book. After all, Lamm has already earned the nickname “Governor Gloom” for his warnings about the naive optimism of Americans in the face of enormous historical changes--the rampant depletion of natural resources, for example.

But Lamm makes a compelling case for his thesis that the country is headed for severe trial unless it embarks on a recognition of realities and a wholesale re-examination of governmental policies. Some of the major issues he examines are budget deficits, the trade deficit, open-ended federal pensions, overpopulation, dislocation of industry, uncontrolled immigration, an excess of litigation and a dissipation of national capital. It is a decidedly un-liberal approach in that Lamm advocates a scaling-back of what government attempts to do, for our own people and for others.

But the seeming intractability of the current budget and trade problems supports Lamm’s argument that existing problems can only be compounded unless difficult decisions are made soon. If nothing else, the book helps remind us that precious little thought is being given to the future and the consequences of indulgent policies that threaten to become future crises. An example is efforts to attack budget problems through ad hoc freezes and across-the-board cuts rather than serious long-range reforms.

In his outspokenness, Lamm runs the risk of being attacked as unpatriotic for running down the country and the nation’s destiny. In fact, he argues for America’s greatness and says it can remain great only if it faces the future realistically. That, indeed, may be a true act of patriotism.