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"Riots, crime and permissiveness are all linked in their minds, in a sense, with the old, New Deal-style leadership. Those Americans who have struggled to get just a bit of the good life are turning away to seek a calmer mooring. Right now they have fastened upon Richard Nixon, who goes to ball games, supports the lean hot dog and follows space flights with the enthusiasm of a small boy. He is the president of the Jaycees, the Kiwanis booster, the cheerleader flying around the world glorying in what middle America has wrought. The Apollo success makes it a good day for people who have taken a lot of scorn for a long time."
In spite of presidential euphoria and middle-American fatigue with the nation's problems, the question remains: Can the U.S. apply its demonstrated technological virtuosity to help master its vexing difficulties at home? Emmanuel Mesthene, director of a Harvard research program on technology and society, believes that an important preface to that goal is already under way. "Our society," he argues, "is coming to a deliberate decision to understand and control technology to good social purpose." Perhaps, but major obstacles clearly remain. Going to the moon is easier—and far less costly—than rebuilding American cities and uplifting the disinherited. There is no obvious prod of international competition, no single challenge perceived and response desired by a cohesive majority.
Two Forces. Nonetheless, the U.S. has opened another frontier in space, and there is no material reason why it cannot do so on earth if only it has the will. In 1893, Historian Frederick Jackson Turner described the American qualities born of frontier life: "That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom." All this could be applied to causes even more arduous—and at least as worthy—as reaching the moon. But it can happen only with the help of two forces that are extremely hard to bring into play, and there is no evidence as yet that they are being marshaled. They are national leadership and national will.