Hearing the news of Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S. debt was unsettling but not a bit surprising. It had been threatened for weeks and, to tell the truth, after the recent machinations between the legislative and executive branches of the government I would say we are lucky the other ratings agencies have not followed suit (yet).

Hearing the news of Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S. debt was unsettling but not a bit surprising. It had been threatened for weeks and, to tell the truth, after the recent machinations between the legislative and executive branches of the government I would say we are lucky the other ratings agencies have not followed suit (yet).

We clearly have some challenges given the size of our debt and the overall condition of our economy, but this is not a financial crisis. We are locked in a crisis of confidence and that begins with the leadership in this country. We seem to lack an Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to lead us out of it.

In spite of the fact that we are all in this together, all 300 million of us, it is going to take one incredibly strong individual to get us headed in a good direction. There is no substitute for leadership.

So I sit here on Monday morning about to begin my work week and will take a bit of my own medicine. I will support the leaders in this organization as I do my part as one of the (minor) leaders here. As a leader in my family I will pay good attention to the needs of my wife, children, grandchildren, and all the folks back home. As a leader in my community I will look for ways to improve the lives of others, even if in very small ways.

This all sounds simple compared with the kinds of things one must do to lead the greatest nation the world has ever seen. But scale is just a relative thing. I am not possessing of the talents or inclination to be a political leader, so not being critical from the point of view that I could do better. The point is, we need our existing leaders to do better and we must demand if of them.

So now we have lost a bit more of our innocence. Our triple-A credit rating is not sacred. Truth is it never was. The people who survived the Great Depression were blessed with an experience that taught them that nothing lasts forever. They were able to appreciate everything they were ever able to obtain and took very little for granted. The Great Recession may afford some of us the same. But we must survive. I just hope it does not take the rest of the decade for our leaders to move us in a direction of growth.