(PART ONE) Politics: If you believe the EU has political leadership problems look at the US - by Stephen Goldstein

Has American public life always been dominated by Lilliputians? Have we always had more shlemiels than heroes? If not, who were some of our relatively recent larger-than-life leaders, what did they have in common, and why don't we have (m)any equal to them today? Those are questions I ask myself and that I hear other people asking — except for the part about the Lilliputians.

Of course, the answer to my first two questions is a resounding No: Greatness and American have gone together in our past. I always think of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and one incident among many in her life. In 1939, when the Daughters of the American Revolution wouldn't let the African-American singer Marian Anderson perform before an integrated audience in its Constitution Hall, Mrs. Roosevelt publicly resigned from the DAR and arranged for Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial.

True leaders always accept responsibility for their actions. As President Truman rightly said, "the buck stops here." They seem to have a centeredness that makes them choose the right thing to do, not poll-tested messages and strategies. But tragically, no First Lady today would dare do anything as principled as Eleanor Roosevelt did. Contrast Truman's stand with Bill Clinton's fiasco enacting Don't Ask Don't Tell and President Obama's gyrations overturning it. Create a federal highway system and make space exploration a top priority today? We're too poor! Today, our answer to civil rights is voter suppression.

But why have we sunk so low? First, we emerged from the Second World War as the richest and most powerful nation on earth — and boasted of it. But since we lost the Vietnam War, President Nixon resigned in disgrace, and we went through the wrenching social dislocations of the 1960's, the country has suffered from clinical depression, from which we have yet to recover. Second, money has replaced morality in politics, and would-be leaders happily sell themselves. Third, we have not been able to adjust to our changing domestic diversity and our role as one among many equals in the world. In short, we are at war with ourselves because we no longer know who we are.

Writing fiction, Jonathan Swift engineered Gulliver's escape from the Lilliputians. Our plight is real and existential, but fixable: We have met the Lilliputians, and they are us — and only we can save us from ourselves.

Read more: America is lacking a larger-than-life leader - South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com