Hail to the chief

It's January 21. One year from today, we'll have a new president, sitting in the Oval Office on the first full day of his or her first term, ready, we hope, to confront the problems of the most powerful nation in the world: The challenges of the new competitive world economy, compounded by corporate greed; the resulting insecurity felt by millions of Americans who don't know what they're going to do to survive in a world in which change is the only constant; the millions who can't afford health care and will be wiped out if afflicted with anything serious; the ongoing threat from terrorism and the lack of consensus as to how to combat it; the foreign entanglements which seem only peripherally related to our national interest; the inability to imagine a future in which we will have energy sources that support our current ways of living, but do not make us dependent on foreign countries; the lack of support from increasingly-powerful countries that truly do not like the way we do things; and so on.

Yet many, if not most, Americans are going to make their choice for the office based on "making history," or on a three-second emotional sound bite, or on "who would I like to have a beer with?"

We have to do better this time. We have to extend ourselves to look beyond the simplistic messages, and try to figure out who is best suited to lead this country at this crucial moment. We have to decide who is best equipped to look, not just one month, or 12 months, or one term, ahead, but who might have the vision to lead us to position ourselves in a world that is freeing itself of the old common truths.

I wish I could be optimistic that we will do all that.