Jay, Henry,
Have read your dialogue with interest, and agree with almost all of what you say. However, one somewhat OT disagreement, Jay. You say, "Tough leadership won the Cold War and set the stage for the stooges that now inhabit power." Actually, I think it is somewhat more accurate to say that the "Cold War" was lost by the USSR rather than that it was "won" by "tough leadership". They rotted from within, both because of their fundamental corruption, and because of their pretensions to being able to actually centrally direct their economy in the way that they did. They simply fell apart. A similar argument, I think, could be made about the problems besetting the Asian countries today. They had/have similar pretensions and similar corruptions (though obviously not exactly the same--would get us way too OT to try to detail the differences).
Also, on the topic of politicians taking credit for good times when credit was not due, please read (or reread) The Triumph of Politics, by David Stockman, on the first few years of the Reagan administration. |
