A Time for Renewal

[babylonsister]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/12/this_was_the_year_that_was.html

A Time for Renewal
By Richard Reeves


LOS ANGELES -- It was the worst of years. It was the best of years. For Americans, both beaten down and hopeful at the same time, this should be, has to be, a time for renewal. New problems, new challenges, a new president, a new generation.

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But Barack Obama, a gifted politician and persuasive speaker, cannot do much alone. He has to govern in the style of Franklin D. Roosevelt, calling out that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. His job, after Jan. 20, 2009, is to bring out the best in the American people -- and that is pretty good stuff.

Twenty years ago, I was in Singapore at a conference on the world economy. The founder of that prosperous little canton, Lee Kuan Yew, rose to give the United States as harsh a tongue-lashing as I've ever heard, essentially attacking us for having no real economic plan for the future, calling us a soft people who would inevitably lose the war against the planning and work ethic of advanced Asian systems, which then did not include China and its ability to organize both Olympics and cheap manufacturing based on new electronic technologies and cheap labor.

Lee was, of course, right about some of that. But the next day, William Safire, then a New York Times columnist, rebutted the Singapore argument, saying that millions of American kids working in garages and basements and libraries would overwhelm the best of planned economies.

Safire was right. Those kids are now taking over, and we will be better for it. America was always about hope and renewal. If I am right about that, 2009 will end as a Happy New Year.