The "I" in Obama

There is no "I" in team, perhaps, but there is one in "Obama," and it's investment. But when Barack Obama talks of investments, he's not talking stocks or funding high tech start-ups. An Obama investment is about being a whole smarter about how America, and Americans, take care of their country and our future.

On Monday, he delivered a major address on fiscal policy in Flint, Michigan, a city that, as he noted, had been losing jobs and falling behind economically for decades. To change the course for Flint and for America, Obama proposed a series of massive investments: in education, in energy policy, and in the way America conducts business around the world. Over and over, he reiterated not only the need to changes — the American economy is in deep trouble, and John McCain is one of the few who think we should stay the frikkin' course — but the need to invest now in the changes we are seeking.

The only trouble? We're not merely broke; we're in huge debt. 10 trillions dollars worth of debt, and much of that to countries like China that don't necessarily have our best interests at heart. We owe the world $10 trillion, we're losing decent jobs, we're losing the ability to create jobs — and Barack Obama wants to invest in education, energy and new industries? How can we possibly afford that?

Wrong question, of course. The right question is, What other choice do we have?

Fear of a massive investment in these economic essentials — education, energy, innovation — will serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy about limits. Under our present course, our country will become a subsidized affiliate of those who hold the notes on our debt. But if we act as Obama is suggested, we can work our way out of these problems rather more quickly than a fear-based outlook would suggest.

If we invest in a child at 5, that child will finish high school and college in about twenty years. At that point, we would expect that child to take up employment that began to pay back the investment his country put into him. But the payback begins long before that. The child in whom we invest — and invest in all ways, including proper health care and a clean, safe community — will have been healthy, out of trouble and she would already probably have had one of the myriad of beginning-wage jobs that are the underpinnings of many of our most necessary service and retail industries. At twenty years of this type of investment, we have not only cut some of the most dramatic costs in others areas — crime, emergency health care, long-term support of those unable to participate in the modern economy — we will already be seeing what will become a huge return on that investment.

It will happen even sooner.

During Barack Obama's two terms as president, two full classes of students will finish high school and a four-year course of college: the Class of 2012 and the Class of 2016. If this country enables these students to get that education free of the long-term debt burden students today face, those students will begin repaying both the financial and expectations debt immediately. We'll have better workers moving into the marketplace, and the willingness — the desire — of private investment to build on the work of government will only increase.

We owe the world trillions of dollars of debt. At this point, it seems an insurmountable debt, a burden we are dumping not merely on our children, but their children, and their children's children, and probably beyond. But it's not a hopeless situation; it's just one that needs us to make a start. Any start. We need to build our way out of this hole, not dig it deeper, and how better than to invest money, and lives, in positive actions for everyone?

Many Americans already see themselves reflected in the life and words of Barack Obama. He's also showing them they can see the big "I" in there, too: Their country investing in their future as they invest in the country's.