Obama's "Sputnik Moment"

The lesson from the 1950s is that it takes more than private enterprise to revive American innovation. It takes lots of government spending.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011, at 11:02 PM ET

President Barack Obama didn't say much about foreign or military policy in Tuesday night's State of the Union address. To the extent he did talk about it, he spent more time on economic agreements with India, South Korea, and China than on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—and, given the state of the economy and the nature of the political battles ahead, the balance was probably right.