Polistacy

Watching 'Frost/Nixon' on TV this evening, I was struck by the awareness that much of my lifetime has been underscored by the failure of those we count on for leadership.

I was born under Eisenhower, but was first aware of Kennedy. He'd barely begun before it was all over. Then came Johnson who stumbled on Vietnam. Nixon came then, and we all know how well that went.

Ford was a joke, then came Carter, who was heralded almost as much as Obama, but proved to be a inept administrator. Reagan followed, who busted the unions and assaulted the middle class, and may have been viewed as a miserable mess, but was rescued by the computer revolution and the fall of the Soviet Union.

Bush senior followed and began the Iraq conflict, and Junior got us into all kinds of extra trouble. In the middle, Clinton did next to nothing except embarrass us all with his personal issues, giving free reign to the critics.

Obama comes along with hope for reason and intelligence, but one year into it we've no resolution to health care or any other worrying issue.

It's been said we have the leadership we deserve, meaning we are such jerks we shouldn't expect more than we've received so far. I fervently hope this is wrong and we - or at least our kids - get the leadership they need.