When a crisis is coupled with a great leader it has resulted in historic changes for the better and worst (my recent brain crush, Naomi Klein calls the latter result the Shock Doctrine) Great leaders have been the catalyst and facilitators of change but the true power for change is in the people*. People give leaders the authority, the privilege to lead.
When you or your way of life is at risk you focus on getting the basics in order. Before the talk of crisis the political narrative about domestic issues was more or less nill. Enter the crisis and suddenly we begin to shine the light on the dark path that Americans have been on. The average person has been teetering on financial crisis like a sharecropper that has to leverage tomorrow’s harvest just to survive another day. Wages are stagnant while healthcare, education, and commodity prices all go up but the land owner still wants his debt paid with interest.
The proletariat class who have long been lulled into a political sleep by the established power structures (can you tell I been reading up on my Marx?) . Bite the hand that feeds you when it is the same hand that starves your brothers and sisters. Vote for the people.
*When I say the people, I mean the lower and middle-classes. There is no real for middle-class but I always defined it as around the average four-person family income which according the 2006 US Census was $48K to 60K. I also liked the definition given by Jared Bernstein, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute: “There are working families who can pay their bills, but they have to really think about such minimal expenditures as picking up a pizza after work, going to the movies, making a long-distance telephone call. They may have some investments, but they depend on each paycheck for their well-being.”
Soundtrack of Mi Vida: The Main Attraction-A Race of Angels