Nation-Building

"'America and its political leaders, after two decades of failing to come together to solve big problems, seem to have lost faith in their ability to do so,' Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald Seib noted last week. 'A political system that expects failure doesn’t try very hard to produce anything else.'

We used to try harder and do better. After Sputnik, we came together as a nation and responded with a technology, infrastructure and education surge, notes Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. After the 1973 oil crisis, we came together and made dramatic improvements in energy efficiency. After Social Security became imperiled in the early 1980s, we came together and fixed it for that moment. 'But today,' added Hormats, 'the political system seems incapable of producing a critical mass to support any kind of serious long-term reform...'

And digging out of this hole is what the next election has to be about and is going to be about — even if it is interrupted by a terrorist attack or an outbreak of war or peace in Iraq. We need nation-building at home, and we cannot wait another year to get started. Vote for the candidate who you think will do that best. Nothing else matters."

New York Times