Americans willing to sacrifice, but lack true leaders

Stephen P. Laffey, the former mayor of Cranston, is making a movie about what regular people across the country think about this nation’s economic woes and their ideas on how to fix the problem. With Stephen T. Skoly of The 989 Project, a movie-production company based in Cranston, Laffey began work on the feature-length documentary “Fixing America” in January and hopes to have it wrapped up by the end of June. Plans for its release and distribution are in the works. He’ll be coming back to Cranston for post-production work and he did not rule out another run for elective office someday.
He spoke with Providence Business News recently about the movie and what he is hearing from ordinary Americans.

PBN: Tell us about the movie you are making, “Fixing America.” Where did this idea come from?
LAFFEY: Well, I can’t sleep. The country is really not in good shape and both parties have destroyed our country financially. It doesn’t matter if it was Bush or Obama. I call it “the Bush-Obama disaster” because they just sped up the process. I have six children, so I’m out in Fort Collins, starting to raise some cattle and some horses. I have a small ranch out there, 36 acres, and I just can’t sleep. I go into my kids’ room and I see a million dollars of debt on their heads [left] by these clowns who run our country.
And so, I was asked to go to the Sundance Film Festival [in January, in Park City, Utah] by some people who wanted me to start a company with them, and it just occurred to me as I was being interviewed on the radio, sitting next to a guy who was making a movie, that someone should make a movie about America and fixing it. Not the past, not the problems, but [focusing on] the future and the solutions.
I have traveled the country the last couple of years, tens of thousands of miles in a car with my kids whipping around the country, stopping at gas stations – not going to highfalutin places – just small places, small towns. … It occurred to me that the people of America have vastly different thoughts about the problems and how to fix them than the people who we elected. There’s a major disconnect. It doesn’t matter what party you’re in. I called up my friend, Stephen Skoly, who has a movie company, and I said, “I should do this. This is what I am good at.” So that’s what we’re doing. We’re traveling the United States of America and we’re randomly pulling over people – we just finished talking to a 70-year-old man who was cat-fishing at a bayou in Arkansas – and we talk to them about the national debt, we talk to them about China and foreign imports and the lack of jobs. … We’re meandering our way to Washington, D.C. … We have a crew of 11 people in two different vehicles. I’m on a back road in Arkansas right now, watching cotton being planted and I’m talking to people all along the way that we see on the road.

PBN: What are people telling you?
LAFFEY: They’re really, really angry and they’re angry about what’s going on with our finances and they want it fixed and they have all different ways of doing it. I’m letting them talk about what they would do, what they would cut, what they would tell the congressmen if they could see them. It has nothing to do with a [political] party. They are angry and I think we’re going to get a different feel from what we’re seeing across the middle of the country where regular folks live and [from] what we see in the Beltway in Washington, D.C., where I’ve been many times. They [people in Washington, D.C., area] think everything is OK.

PBN: What, so far, have you discovered about what people want to do to fix our financial problems? LAFFEY: They want the budget balanced. They don’t want any more debt, that’s what they want, so far. … I think we have some answers, but you have to watch the movie for all the answers. I think the common people, the regular people of America, they understand what a ditch we’re in and they’re willing to sacrifice to get out of it but we don’t have leadership in this country that’s willing to tell people the truth.

PBN: Is this movie related in any way to the Tea Party?
LAFFEY: No, it’s Steve Laffey making a movie. It is not related to the Republican Party, it is not related to the Democratic Party. It’s related to the fact that I, literally, cannot sleep at night, knowing that my children in the future won’t have the [life] that I’ve had. I lived the American Dream. I was a poor kid, son of a tool maker, went to Harvard business school and I don’t know how much anyone else could have a better life than me. … The Republican Party hates me. The Democratic Party hates me.

PBN: How are your experiences as mayor of Cranston helping you make this movie?
LAFFEY: Cranston was broke. … In the four years I was mayor, the bond rating went up … the city went from a $12 million deficit to a $24 million surplus … and [the situation] was fixed. I left Cranston in very good shape.

PBN: Do you believe there is an answer out there to “fix” America?
LAFFEY: Yes, I think people are willing to do what they did in Cranston, so everybody shares the pain and everybody shares the gain.

PBN: Would you ever consider coming back to Rhode Island and running for office again?
LAFFEY: You never know. I love it here, but I love Rhode Island. It’s where I grew up and it’s where my friends are. •

INTERVIEW
Stephen P. Laffey
POSITION: Filmmaker
BACKGROUND: Mayor of Cranston, from Jan. 1, 2003 to Dec. 31, 2006; president and CEO of Morgan Keegan & Co., an investment-banking firm based in Memphis, Tenn. where he worked from 1992 to 2001 and was president/CEO his final year there; author of “Primary Mistake,” recounting his unsuccessful run as a Republican in Rhode Island for the U.S. Senate seat then held by Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (now R.I. governor), published by Penguin Books in 2007.
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s degree in economics, 1984, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine; master’s degree in business administration, 1986, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
FIRST JOB: Scraping the baking pans at Rainbow Bakery on Reservoir Avenue in Cranston, when he was a teenager
RESIDENCE: Fort Collins, Colo.
AGE: 49