A friend notes that March 4, 2005, the day on which this is written, is exactly 72 years to the day later than the day on which Franklin Roosevelt took office as president and assured Americans that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Exactly 72 years before that, Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office and appealed to "the mystic chords of memory." Seventy-two years before that, George Washington took the oath of office as the new nation's first president. Lincoln began his address at Gettysburg with the words, "Four score and seven years ago" --...