Procrasta-Nation

The United States is a nation of procrastinators.  Is there any doubt about this?  It's only human nature, after all, to avoid dealing with unpleasantness.  Two unfolding events should make this clear to everyone.  At the same time, however, we also are a nation that excels at crisis management, which is precisely where our national predilection for procrastination lands us time after time.

Look at the current events that are dominating the national and sports headlines right now.  The National Football League is in a work stoppage, the owners having locked out the players over a disagreement as to how to share the billions of dollars in revenues that professional football generates each year.  In reading the paper, it would appear that both sides are stubbornly locked into their positions, unwilling to concede most of the minor and none of the major points to the other side.  However both sides know that a work stoppage that lasts into the regular season is financial suicide, so a deal will of course get done in time for the players to report to training camp and for the season to start on time.  The alternative is unthinkable and both sides know this, even if for the sake of negotiating leverage they hope that somehow the other side doesn't.

Because there is still time to reach a deal, there is little reason for either side to give in to the demands of the other.  Only when time runs short will the talks get serious.  Until then, each side is only too willing to give pessimistic interviews to the press, hoping that the negativity and fear of backlash will force the other side to cave. The other side is using the same tactic.  This is posturing posing as negotiation, with both sides using the media to try to gain public support.  

The same scenario is playing out in Washington over the debt ceiling issue.  Both parties know that a default is unthinkable, yet both sides are trumpeting default in the media to try to wrangle some concessions from the other side.  There are no compelling reasons to strike a deal until a deal has to be struck, and as unsettling as this stalemate is to the rest of the world, this is the way it works.  Why agree to anything when there still is time to try to wait out the other side?  It's political poker and is as old a negotiating tactic as there is.

Think about it for a minute.  Who doesn't wait until the last minute to deal with life's unpleasantries?  I think we can all agree that wrangling over money is absolutely one of life's less pleasant undertakings.  If you can find me one person who starts working on next year's taxes on April 16, I can find you ten million who don't.  How many of us have picked out and/or bought a cemetery plot or even made more than a first pass at putting together a will?  It is rare the person who proactively tackles the responsibilities that make life more of a chore.

So fear not America.  There will be football on Sundays this fall and our elected representatives will come to an agreement over the issue of our national debt ceiling.  Heck, they may even figure out a way to put off for a few more years the real discussion that needs to be had —forcing our government to spend only what it is able to take in, because if there is anything that we are as good at as procrastination, it has to be buck-passing.