YOU CAN’T FOOL THOMAS FRIEDMAN: It’s Sputniks All The Way Down.

Sadly, not the Webb Wilder kind.

UPDATE: David Kirkham emails:

Obama is right. This is our Sputnik moment and we better take heed of history. The Soviet Union fell because they ran out of money. I know. For 2 years I watched the slow death spiral of The People’s Aircraft Company–Poland’s crown jewel in their socialist state. PZL Mielec produced 3 MiG’s a day at the height of the Cold War. By everyone’s account they were “too big to fail.” I was there the day the MiG factory crashed. I saw the smoking wreckage of 20,000 men’s and women’s lives, abandoned by men with lofty credentials who thought they knew more than those they turned out into the cold.

Well, the men with credentials mostly did okay.