Engineering and Presidents' Day - - Three In A Row

The current issue of the Harvard Business Review has a special issue entitled Reinventing America: Why the World Needs the U.S. to Bounce Back.  The titles of the articles say a lot - -

• "Why U.S. Competitiveness Matters to All of Us"
• "The Looming Challenges to U.S. Competitiveness"
• "A Jobs Compact for America's Future"
• "A Warning Sign from Global Companies"
• "Rethinking School"
• "Does America Really Need Manufacturing?"
• "How to Make Finance Work"

The February 18, 2012 issue of the Economist picked up on the HBR issue in the Schumpeter column - - This time it's serious: America is becoming a less attractive place to do business.  The closing paragraph tells the bulk of the story:

"Yet it is difficult to read this collection of essays without a sense of foreboding.  The one thing that worries the HBS alumni more than anything else - the state of American politics - is the most difficult to fix.  The political pendulum swings unpredictably, making it hard to plan for the future.  Should companies assume that they will have to abide by Mr. Obama's health care law when it comes into effect in 2014, or will the Republicans have repealed it by then?  No one knows.  And Washington's aversion to compromise makes the budget almost unmendable.  Without both parties' fingerprints on a deal, no one can curb the huge entitlement programmes that grow automatically, such as Medicare and Social Security.  So deficits yawn and the welfare state keeps growing, even as America's roads crumble.  That is not a recipe for dynamism."

So on Presidents' Day, engineering should reflect on what was in between the single terms (and unpopular terms) of John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams.  What was between the two were 24-years of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe.  We have many difficult and complex problems that need to be addressed.  They are long term problems that will require long term solutions.  What we need is 24 straight years of world class political leadership that has the ability to balance our obligations to pay for the past with our desires to invest in the future.