Bob Cramer's Blog

There is no telling where this country might be today if  Japan had not scored a last-minute goal to tie, and then win in penalty kicks, against the US women at the World Cup soccer championship game last month.  If the US had prevailed and these great American athletes had been celebrated on TV, print and online, the patriotic goodwill emitted from all the positive attention may well have crept into the halls of Congress, causing our leaders perhaps to come up with a faster, more intelligent debt-ceiling agreement thus avoiding all the residual fallout that has now caused markets to plummet, people to panic and bad vibes at home and around the world.   No, when you don’t win, the World’s Cup doesn’t runneth over; in fact, it may have cost the World’s economy two trillion dollars.

You may remember on July 17^th, in the remaining few days of calm just before our summer storm, I wrote “Sunday for the USA”.   I thought that the US soccer team embodied all the best qualities of our country, and if they could come home with the cup again, after all they had faced, it would be a moment that we would remember and feel good about, perhaps on a similar stage as to when Brandi Chastain ripped off her shirt in utter joy after scoring the penalty kick goal in 1999.  But it wasn’t meant to be this time as a gritty Japanese team fought back to score very late in the game, and perhaps did for the beleaguered Japanese people what I was hoping a US victory would do for us. 

So as we move forward, with fall coming and a new school year on deck, we need to find that special moment, that unique event that pulls this country together.    No one can predict what it will be, a miraculous landing on the Hudson River, the solemn 10th anniversary remembrance of 9/11 or a sudden dose of rational thinking in Washington, DC that sparks our country out of its funk.   The US women’s soccer team almost brought us to that special place; be on the lookout for it somewhere else, probably where we are expecting it least.