A dozen years ago, Robert Reich, academic economist and secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, published a brief essay in The New Republic. In “Story time,” he identified four basic stories we Americans have been telling about ourselves since the nation’s beginning. Two of the stories are positive, two are negative, but all four are thoroughly American. Reich’s interest was political, and so he mused about the way Democrats and Republicans frame and articulate the four, what relative stress and nuance the parties attach to them. “Speak to these four stories,” he wrote, “and you resonate with the tales Americans have been telling each other since our founding. … If they’re to be understandable, policies and issues must fit into larger narratives about where we have been as a nation, what we are up against and where we could be going.” Reich made it clear that all four stories are constantly in play; it is not a matter of choosing to tell some, but not others. How the … [Read more...]