After 10 Glorious Years, Sunshine State News and I Are Passing the Baton

WASHINGTON -- Amazingly, the congressional hearings on Toyota were relatively civilized. Apart from some inevitable theatrical hectoring, thequestioning was generally respectful, the emotions controlled. This was allthe more remarkable given the drama of some of the testimony, such as thatoffered by a tearful Rhonda Smith, who recounted how, in her runaway Lexus,she had called her husband because "I wanted to hear his voice one moretime."

We inherited the worst situation since the Great Depression. That is the reflexive response of President Obama to the troubles from which he has been unable to extract his country. Even before the inauguration, he says, there were projections of a $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009. That deficit is not my deficit.

A few weeks ago President Barrack Obama announced his plan for NASA and boy was it a shocker! After promising -- twice -- during his campaign to preserve Americas space program, the president demonstrated an unfortunate lack of vision for the future of manned space flights. He proved his rhetoric was as hollow as his promises -- mere attempts to woo the people of the Space Coast so that he could win their votes for his election.

No president enters office knowing everything he needs to know. His experience is limited to some greater or lesser extent; his knowledge of the people from whom he will choose appointees is incomplete; his mastery of the substance of public policy, after years on the campaign trail, is likely to be out of date. And like all of us, he does not know what the future will bring. So presidents must rely on something else, something intangible and unquantifiable, in determining what is within the realm of possibility and what is a bridge too far: intuition.