Speaking of John Chancellor....

I thought I'd poke around the web to see if I couldn't find some more information on the man whose commentaries I remember so vividly from childhood. And it didn't take me long to come across a Library Journal piece about his book Peril and Promise.

NBC News journalist Chancellor wrote this book in "anger and frustration" over the United States' continuing inability to manage its affairs. The country has gone to hell since Kennedy's assassination, he says, with the American people let down by one ineffective President and Congress after the other. He sees the United States losing its competitive edge in technology to Japan and West Germany, bankrupting itself with deficits, letting its infrastructure rot, and abusing its human resources by miseducating its youth and not retraining its work force.

Sound disturbingly familiar? It could've been released yesterday, and you wouldn't know the difference. Except now we've largely lost our competitive edge, we're sending our union jobs to China, the deficit is bigger than ever, job training has given way to poverty-wage jobs at Wal-Mart, and the party in control of government wants us to teach kids that the Bible is the only science textbook you'll ever need.


Chancellor with LBJ.