The other day it occurred to me that during Ronald Reagan's run for the Presidency he created a "Misery Index". This index represented a total of the rate of inflation, plus the prime rate, as an indicator of how the American people felt about how they were doing. No one has suggested resurrecting this index in recent years. My thought was to create a "Happiness Index". How happy are you with the leadership of the country. The problem is that other than taking an outright poll, how do you determine happiness? Could you merely ask people if they are happy, or not with the way things are going? Think about it for a moment, and try to objectively look at what's been going on the last couple of years. For the last fifty years, the Republican Party successfully presented itself as the people's choice for as a strong anti-communist party versus the former Soviet threat. Republican President after President was elected on the basis of toughness versus communism. By 1992, communism was no longer an issue as Russia, and the satellites went democratic, and the Berlin Wall had fallen. Suddenly, the Republican Party felt its foreign policy legs come out from under it. The communist bogeyman which was real since 1917 was no longer an issue. A sitting Republican President, George HW Bush was defeated handily by Democratic Candidate, Bill Clinton who had NO foreign policy experience, or even an understanding of things foreign. During the campaign that followed, foreign policy was a NON-ISSUE. There was no communist bogeyman for the Republicans to pin their hopes on. The tragedy of 9/11 changed everything. When the tragedy struck, the current President of the United States was handed terrorism on a silver platter as an issue. Terrorism could then be used as a replacement for communism as the next boogeyman. Anti-terrorism would serve as the underpinning of the Republican Party the same way anti-communism served for over 70 years. The President attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan who had harbored Osama Bin Laden, and his allies for years. When it came to finishing the job, and surrounding Osama in the mountains of Tora Bora, Afghanistan, we let this mass murderer get away by leaving the job to foreign hired mercenaries, the anti Taliban Afkan nationals. I assume we simply did not want to take the American manpower losses that might have been demanded. The President then committed the American army and wealth to destroying the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Our entry to this war was based on false premises. There were no weapons of mass destruction. We are now left with chaos and civil war in that country, and no EXIT STRATEGY. As Americans, not one of us, including the President has any idea how this war will finish. He, the President has now placed our country in the same position as we were in during Viet Nam - Quagmire. When Americans enter a war, they need to know the objective. During WW II, it was the taking of Berlin in Europe, or the fall of Tokyo in Japan. In Viet Nam, there was no mission, except the ephemeral objective of keeping South Viet Nam from going communist. What does that mean? Depending on how you calculate it, the Viet Nam war went on for about 15 years. How long will Iraq take? Richard Stoyeck’s background includes being a limited partner at Bear Stearns, Senior VP at Lehman Brothers, Kuhn Loeb, Arthur Andersen, and KPMG. Educated at Pace University, NYU, and Harvard University, today he runs Rockefeller Capital Partners and StocksAtBottom.com http://www.stocksatbottom.com