With these major acts of reform, the stage would finally be set to attack the nation’s real problems. This had to be done without malice, without frenzy, and without repellent attacks of partisan histrionics. Oscar felt that this could be done. It looked bad ... it looked very bad ... to the outside observer, it looked well nigh hopeless. Yet the American polity still had great reserves of creativity—if the country could be rallied and led in the right direction. Yes, it was true that the nation was broke, but other countries had seen their currencies annihilated and their major industries rendered irrelevant. This condition was humiliating, but it was temporary, it was survivable. When you came down to it, America’s abject defeat in economic warfare was a very mild business compared to, say, twentieth-century carpet bombing and armed invasion.