Note to Vivek: (Ameri)Can-do is Normal in America

By Partha Chakraborty-

Former Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy recently raised eyebrows in a viral message with his discourse on a “c-word: culture.” “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence,” he claims. Further, he suggests if we grow up aspiring normalcy, mediocrity is all we will achieve.

I want to talk about another expression that starts with a “c” – “can-do.” It is this c-word that brought me and my wife to the US as students and drives us, and our son, a US Citizen by birth, every single day.

I reveled in stories of what I call “(Ameri)Can-do” while growing up in India, our son learned of it early in life, and it became the core of his identity. As these stories go, rag-tag groups of “tired poor huddled masses yearning to be free” found their way here. Despite everything that could, and did, go wrong, we created the world’s biggest economy and an arsenal of democracy that is the envy of the world. We won two World Wars and crafted a World Order that instills, and enforces, peace that is unparalleled in world’s history. Despite original sins, and many transgressions within our borders, we created a land where “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” form the foundation of this American Experiment, the oldest democracy in the world.

That is the story that beckons people to this “shining city on a hill.” Once inside, American Exceptionalism elevates these frail and frivolously ordinary mortal beings, so they build, together, this great nation. American Exceptionalism is the everyday manifestation of a “can-do” attitude that built this nation.

Can-do is as American as Apple Pie, and universal. It is true that can-do is prominent among immigrant communities. They are a self-selected bunch whose story in America started with taking a risk; they have vivid institutional memory of what drove them across, so they keep trying. I have found can-do stories just the same in all communities – women and men down in the dumps deciding they can be better, children of broken homes take refuge in robotics labs and being the best, youngsters in forgotten parts of the country deciding on a life less ordinary and getting it, and so on.

American can-do celebrates the agency of an individual. In India I faced explicit parental expectations to be “a doctor, an engineer, or a high government official.” Things turned out very different, and much better. Lack of agency might be an easy path in the short term, but life is much bigger than a first job. I have found that youngsters who were grinded early on tend to lose the drive to keep on going. Their early success may have been because they did not know anything different. These advantages frit away with newer challenges, and they are left rudderless just when they need a reboot.

Can-do is critical for success no matter where you are in the world. What is unique about “(Ameri)Can-do” is that America is a country of second chances. Unless your ancestors were brought here against their will, we are all descendants of folks who chose to come here for a second chance. Second-chance and reinvention form the core of who we are. Our society celebrates it, our legal systems codify it, our political structures manifest it, and our financial systems encourage it to create an economic powerhouse.

More than anything, can-do is normal in America. In other parts of the world “culture” can-be a stand-in but is a poor substitute as the American dominance in geopolitics, economy, and culture proves. When much-vaunted elements of “culture” are not shared across the board it fails almost uniformly. A can-do attitude, facilitated by structural reforms, made both China and India more credible members of the world economy recently. Thankfully, we have had the same reckoning at the birth of this nation, and before. America succeeds because can-do is in our DNA.

Mr. Ramaswamy is justified in shining light on structural issues at a societal level. However, we will be short-sighted to lose track of things that made America great. Can-do is a much bigger part of it than culture is, both at macro and micro levels, and is most normal anywhere in this great nation.