Whither Goest Thou, Public Shakespearian?

Summary

‘You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.’ So said Rahm Emanuel, the Chief of Staff for President-elect Obama, in November 2008. But, he continued, ‘what I mean … is that it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before’. Emanuel was hoping to persuade his listeners at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council that the financial crisis in 2008 presented the country with opportunities to address its serious problems – problems ignored for too long, problems so large solutions might come from either party. That, he said, is ‘the silver lining’. Twelve years later, in 2020, the country – and the world, too, as was also true in 2008 – faces another economic crisis, this time instigated by a novel coronavirus, itself a crisis, a pandemic with, as of this writing, no endgame. The long-term problems Emanuel spoke of were not addressed in the wake of the 2008 crisis, which presents us now with greater challenges but perhaps greater political will to address systemic problems – to do … something. Emanuel’s words hint at the difficulty, however.