America is great because of our astounding fundamentals.

And Richard Fernandez argues it is our inefficient often ineffective government that gives us space for fundamentals to flourish.

America at the end of 2014 is in the strange position of having strengths that no one had even counted on. Its oil industry has produced a cornucopia of energy in despite of administration obstruction. It’s space industry and science are poised to lay the foundation for the commercial exploitation of space. It is, despite everything, in better shape than Europe and in far better condition than Japan.
A new American century may be in the works just when the intellectuals had written it off. The US may is led by unimaginative elites who have no idea what to do with these strengths except tax them. Yet that may be fortunate, almost as if God had blessed America with leaders who are too dumb to know they are.
Maybe the Founders were right: politicians are ultimately necessary evils best held down to as low a level of activity as possible. Ultimately a nation lives or dies on its character and culture. If that is sound then America simply can’t be held down, or maybe that will be China.
Such a result would suggest it wasn’t just Chuck Hagel who didn’t matter; the whole Hope and Change strategy may simply have been the modern equivalent of the Five Year Plan,  a MacGuffin everyone thinks is important but has no significance beyond a plot device. The administration’s vain attempt to imitate the ‘decisive leadership’ of the EU, China and other authoritarianisms succeeded because it failed.

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/12/01/mining-engineers-led-by-communications-studies-majors/