We Trust Bill Gates has eclipsed Bill Clinton as business leaders have been given a higher profile recently and are now seen as the ones who will pave the path into a great and prosperous future. Washington CEO Inc. I have watched with some interest over the past decade as business leaders have quietly replaced political leaders as the new saviors of America. Economics have become the new ideology. It is, after all, the establishment of permanent normal trade relations with the People's Republic of China that we now believe will bring about all of the humanitarian changes we've sought for decades through political and economic isolation. This is bandied and ballyhooed, even though it was the refusal to play Sun City that brought down South Africa's apartheid and it was the strict regulation of our economic dealings with the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc that eventually brought down the Iron Curtain and the Cold War with it.
Embargoes are a thing of the past.
It is free trade and the dizzying rush to globalization that is winning the day. Over the years, religion, education, politics, and science each in turn have been hailed as the saviors of the world. Today, it is business. Bill Gates is the king in Prosperityland, and Alan Greenspan is a knight in shining armor and the chief protector of the commonwealth. And his annual CEO summits are really gatherings of world leaders.