But will it be too late?

A year before they choose a new government for the post-Bush era, Americans are desperate to change the country’s course.

According to opinion polls and interviews with political experts and voters, the U.S. population is more liberal than at any time in a generation, hungering to end the Iraq war, turn inward and use the federal government to solve problems at home.

• Just 1 in 5 Americans think the country is going in the right direction, the worst outlook since the Reagan-Bush era ended in 1992.
  
• Less than one-third of Americans like the way the current President Bush is handling his job, among the lowest ratings in half a century. The people had similarly dismal opinions just before they ended the Jimmy Carter era in 1980, the Kennedy-Johnson years in 1968 and the Roosevelt-Truman era in 1952.
  
• The ranks of people who want the government to help the poor have risen sharply since the early 1990s - dramatically among independents, but even among Republicans.

All of this is music to my ears. But I am just very worried that by the time the next President is sworn in our country will have been damaged so fundamentally that it will take decades to restore our reputation in the world, and the confidence of its people in their government.

For a job that large I just feel we need a John Edwards or Barack Obama, none of the others give me that the confidence that those two do.