An Epic Story

I have been watching the TV show Mad Men for four seasons. The show has been uneven and at times cliché, but not without poignant moments. One thing that stuck with me wasn’t even a major plot point or regarding the main character Don Draper. It was a story told about Pete Campbell, a person born into a prominent New York family but did not inherit much wealth. One of the characters (I do not remember which one) explained that Pete’s grandfather had much wealth before the Great Depression, but he, like many others, panicked and sold all of his real estate holdings in Manhattan. Needless to say, the move didn’t pan out too well for him or for Pete. The character quipped that Pete’s grandfather lacked faith in America, a cardinal sin that cannot go unpunished.

For some reason, I have always remembered this anecdote, and it was awoken by the great Warren Buffett, when wrote a New York Times piece during the Great Depression of our era and called for people to have confidence in the great country of the United States at the precise time when confidence was nowhere to be found. Buffett professes that the time is dire, but he was personally buying stocks, because he believed in America, a country that served two World Wars, a Great Depression, as well as numerous smaller wars and panics to become the prominent economic powerhouse in the world. By being on the polar opposite of Pete’s grandfather, Buffett was proven to be worthy of the name “Oracle of Omaha” as the U.S. economy made a ferocious come back from the brink of disaster.

These stories were not included in John Gordon’s book, which was published before Mad Men debuted and before the Great Recession appeared. Yet the moral of the stories and the book remain the same: having faith in America pays.

Nothing was foretold about America’s rise. The country was deemed unlikely to survive as an independent republic even by many of its founders. While the likes of Alexander Hamilton recognized America’s vast potential, there were simply too many things that could go wrong.

If we were to look at experiences of other countries, such worries become instantly justified. Latin America, a continent blessed with more natural resources than the continent the United States was to occupy, never rose to the occasion and fell apart numerous times.

America, however, avoided all traps. Numerous disasters struck even before the eventful twentieth century, as America engaged in a premature war with the world’s greatest power Great Britain, only to become a house divided in the tremendously costly Civil War. Besides political turmoil, America’s economic rise was also far from pre-ordained, as the country was hit with one panic after another.

Yet somehow, America always picked itself up, and always came back stronger and more vigorous than ever, and this element is what makes the American story so fascinating. Just like Gordon described in his sub-title, America’s rise from a colony to superpower is truly an “Epic History of American Economic Power”.