More Ritalin, please.

I’m not much for dwelling on the "good ol’ days". For one, they weren’t all good, no one’s were. But it is fascinating to consider how the memory does play havoc with your psyche. Take this test. Think about your last performance review. I defy you to remember anything good your boss may have said. The only thing you remember is the how your boss unfairly focused on the mistakes in that report that went up to corporate. Anything good has long since been forgotten and, you know, the boss is such a jerk anyway.

But think about your good ol’ days, however you choose to define them, and if you are like most, everything seemed easier, less complicated and certainly less hectic. It’s one thing when there were only 3 or 4 channels to choose from and nothing was on. Now you have to wind your way through upwards of 100 just to come to the same conclusion. Man, that’s complicated.

I thought of all this recently following our recent celebration of the ubiquitous "Presidents Day." It may be just me but I think life was better when we just celebrated Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday. (I know, save your cards and letters. At the federal level, we still celebrate Washington’s birthday as the third Monday in February.) The reason is that when I was growing up, before our good friends on the right gave us the completely misnamed "No Child Left Behind" act, teachers gave us history lessons about Washington and Lincoln. Year in and year out. You couldn’t help but learn some history. Now, with public education focused almost solely on forcing kids to learn just enough to pass embarrasingly easy proficiency exams, precious little time seems to be spent on basic U.S. history. Either that or we, as a society, have the collective attention span of a puppy. How else to explain the incredibly high rankings of George W. Bush in a recent poll commissed by Washington College in honor of, there it is again, "Presidents Day."

That poll rated Ronald Reagan as the greatest president. But I'll forgive the populace for this one given that it's been more than 16 years since he left office. In this day when most people can't remember the last time they flossed, it's rather unfair to ask them to remember something that is so last millenium. That tends to make it easy to erase from our collective conscience the arms-for-hostages, Iran-Contra mess that made Reagen look like a dottering old fool on the witness stand. But I can't give a pass to those who put George W. in the top 5.

Putting politics aside, which is always hard, W. is still in office. Don't you think we ought to at least wait until we can judge his whole body of work before placing him in historic context? This is the equivalent to watching hearing Clay Aiken on "American Idol" and concluding, after one song, that he's the greatest singer ever.

But putting politics in the mix for a moment, I wonder, exactly, how these folks define "great", recognizing, of course that many of these also use the word "genius" to describe the latest Lindsey Lohan CD. Is is the soaring deficit under his watch when he inherited a surplus that makes W. great? Is it the senseless American casualties (1500 and counting) piling up in Iraq because of a war being fought under outrageously false pretenses that makes W. great?

If W's Medicare prescription drug program works every bit as well as, say, his education program, then his legacy is safe. We won't be able to afford the ritalin we apparently need in order to pay attention for more than 30 seconds.