Competitiveness and innovation are never affected by government exhortations, nor indeed are they affected by any other exhortations, including those of business schools or “inspirational” speakers.

They come from the underlying real economic and financial conditions of a country and of the world in which it functions.

One can only look at the United States' position in the world and offer a bitter smile at Obama's empty words.

Debts of monumental proportions in every accounting from international balances to personal finance, idiotic pointless wars, and mindless military and security expenditures - all at the same time new competitors like China, India, Brazil, and even Russia grow to new strengths.

The United States is simply not competitive in so many areas of its economy. Nor is there any reason to believe that it can become so before undergoing a great deal of painful adjustment, the kind of adjustment its government works tirelessly to avoid.

Their government ignores reality because Americans are on average surely the world's greatest whiny babies when it comes to painful adjustments.

It is their sense of boundless entitlement, fostered by countless dumb politicians blubbering in Fourth of July speeches about the American Dream and passing laws and budgets, year after year, which are completely irresponsible.

That is simply a one-way trip to nowhere, no matter how big your economy and how great some of its past performance.

But Americans are suckers for tent preachers, in everything from new product advertising to politics and self-help gurus helping themselves to people’s pocket books, and Obama is really starting to sound like one more of a tiresome breed.

The answer, of course, is for America to shut-up and roll its sleeves up – even then there are no guarantees of the same kind of future as it has enjoyed in the past - but you never fire America’s imagination by truth and reality.

Miracles, sermons, sugar plums, and fairy stories are always in demand.
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Response to a reader:

"President Obama's great promise has been utterly wasted in policy-setting."

Absolutely, and I have to believe he represented the last great hope of changing America's course, Mr. Murray.

The entire planet breathed a sigh when Bush left office and this bright, charming young man entered.

But I cannot think of one area now where Obama has not disappointed, often greatly disappointed.

It does really seem that elections do not matter in the United States.

The pointless Afghan War goes on and on.

America is killing hundreds of civilians in Pakistan.

Iraq remains the mess America has made of it, millions reduced to hopeless lives for a generation.

America's client, Israel, continues its brutal, bloody policies, never once making a genuine effort at peace, never once even acknowledging the inhumanity of its actions.

Internally, American politics are the same dog-fight they ever were. The Culture of Complaint prevails in everything, the Tea Party being just the latest change of costume for the same old play. No sense is heard anywhere on the national scene, at least from anyone of influence or even potential influence.

Sinking into old age as I am, it is exceedingly melancholy to consider the way virtually nothing in America has changed for the better since I was an angry young man over the horrors of Vietnam. American political rhetoric remains as utterly meaningless as 45 years ago.

The slaughter of innocents continues all over the globe, indeed, now is becoming computerized so that buzz-cut young men in secret rooms can play games at computer consoles, pumping their fists after sending a Hellfire missile into a home full of people.

I think it likely the only force now which will precipitate real change in America is its relative decline in the world, an unavoidable reality, which will cause many changes in attitudes and beliefs as it truly takes hold.