random rants and references

This article by Michael Barone: Four score and two reflects on the 72 -year period between America's greatest challenges and the three great presidents who met them and wonders if we are at another turning point where a great challenge and leader meet.

As he puts it : "We stand today one lifetime away from Franklin Roosevelt, two lifetimes from Abraham Lincoln, only three lifetimes away from George Washington. 1933, 1861 and 1789 were all turning points, moments when men mattered. Men of piercing intelligence and farsighted men of extraordinary and unusual character.”

Regarding today and George W. Bush, “The threats to the nation are not as great. Yet his presidency may come to be seen as another turning point, and one in which the president's character, and the choices he need not have made but did make, could shape the nation for a lifetime to come.”

Barone seems to think that Bush is clearly making a foriegn policy transformation; but that his domestic policy transformation is not so clearly emerging. It's hard to disagree with that assessment.

Certainly, the Mid-East situation seems to be reacting very positively to his policies, fed by successes in Afganistan and Iraq. Domestically, it is a bit murky. My take is that his tax policy has engineered a major economic recovery; his education policy is a positive but expensive start at incentives to improve learning and to foster competition; his Medicare drug bill overshot the mark though he did get a start towards health savings accounts and is keeping health care high on the agenda; Social Security reform is headed in the right direction with personal accounts, which may become the lynchpin for making the "ownership society" more reality than sound bite. If these initiatives take hold as he pursues them in his second term, the nation will have made a major turning point.

I don't know how much faith to put in the 72-year period, but I do think this president has the character, insight and intellect to lead in a transformative age. We are living in interesting times.