Free Republic

When I launched this column in January of 1990 I thought the new decade held great promise. The Soviet Union was tottering, America had regained its economic and political footing under Ronald Reagan, and the European Union was making steady progress in removing barriers to trade and investment. But looking back, I see that human progress doesn't roll forward steadily; it suffers fits and starts. My optimism back then about the land east of the Oder was justified. The Soviet "evil empire," as President Reagan described it, was falling apart and would finally collapse in late 1991, freeing 14 non-Russian...

<p>It's only March, but the political debate in the U.S. is going full blast. One argument is that invading Iraq was a mistake because it only aroused Muslim ire and turned the "Clash of Civilizations" that Samuel Huntington envisioned eight years ago into a bloody reality.</p>

<p>Finance ministers of the G-7 who met in Boca Raton at the weekend at least didn't make the same mistake as their forebears did in 1987, when their Louvre Accord efforts to rig the foreign-exchange markets led to the October U.S. stock market crash. But they publicly (in their communique) worried about the same old thing, volatility in currency swings. Specifically, they were concerned about the downward slide of the U.S. dollar, which has lost one-third of its value relative to the euro in the last two years.</p>

<p>As we look back on the year 2003 in America, it is clear that many things remained the same. Broadway fell back on revivals, "Gypsy," "Wonderful Town," etc. (again) and Hollywood on blood and guts "Master and Commander," "Cold Mountain," etc. (again). The same names, Tom Clancy, Danielle Steel, etc. were on the fiction bestseller lists.</p>

<p>When Edith Bartley called the Journal last Wednesday morning to say that her husband had finally lost his long and courageous battle against cancer, my thoughts went back to my first meeting with Robert L. Bartley. That was a long time ago. In the late 1960s, Bob had dropped into the Journal's London bureau, where I was based. He was then an editorial writer in New York, barely 30 years old, but didn't seem especially thrilled in the presence of glamorous foreign correspondents.</p>

<p>Much has been made of the "jobless recovery" in the U.S., and most of the much has been highly political. One of the Bush administration's biggest missteps, the laying on of high steel tariffs 20 months ago, was prompted in part by loud complaints that foreign imports were eating up American jobs. The administration, having gone to the brink of a trade war with Europe, with the World Trade Organization in Europe's corner, nonetheless rescinded the tariffs last week.</p>

<p>The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq so far has been used against George W. Bush and Tony Blair by their political enemies in Europe. But very little has been made of it in the U.S., which bore the main cost of the war. Now, why would that be?</p>