Kohut says it’s hard to be sanguine in light of the way things are going.

Question: Are you generally optimistic or pessimistic about the way the world is headed?

Andrew Kohut: Oh I don’t know. I can’t answer a question like that. You know you can say you’re optimistic and . . . You know the world is full of surprises, Lord knows. In 2001 we thought, you know, we had no enemies. The world . . . We were on a course. . . The only problem seemed to be that the stock market boom seemed to be a little bit over, and look what happened. History . . . The course of history . . . The course of the . . . The course of the world and the course of this country has at least changed, which affects the course of the world. And I don’t think you can be too sanguine about what the future holds.

Question: How will this age be remembered?

Andrew Kohut: Well I think this age will be remembered as a time in which America really struggled with is world leadership. The United States went into a new phase of . . . of . . . of . . . of economic development when it . . . as its . . . as its . . . as its technologies became more dominant, its populations changed from . . . became an older population and began to become an increasingly Latino population. I don’t have a quick adjective – the age of whatever – but I think those are the dominant themes.

Recorded on: 9/14/07