many ways a capital of reinvention and hope in the world. and america in that same time period, as the president reminded us, painfully on tuesday night, seems to be becoming something else. and that is the great drama of our time in many ways. you have a column where you right about this, i think the column is going to be posted tomorrow. what is much more threatening to the american future, you write, is the american idea itself. now lived by people have a world away, even as it withers at home. america has inspired with its can-do frontier culture of self-help and self-making. millions of people in india and china and elsewhere to believe in the creed of reinvention and has taught the ordinary to dream and dare in for a corners of the world where dreaming and daring are still almost criminal. and we see it now playing out in india and china and other places, and it s kind of shrivelled here at home. it s amazing to me, you know, when i was a child and i would go to india on thes