Welcome to our young century: Karl Rove edition

Remember the classic "In the Year 2000" skits that Conan O'Brien used to do in the late 1990s? The premise was that, even though the year 2000 was right around the corner, he and his supporting cast would predict the creation of fantastic inventions. Well, today's National Review brings us something that is pretty much the opposite: an opinion piece by Karl Rove in which he makes a claim that, though the century is but 7 years old, he can identify the key threat over the next 93 years.

I believe history will provide a more clear-eyed verdict on this president’s leadership than the anger of current critics would suggest.

President Bush will be viewed as a far-sighted leader who confronted the key test of the 21st century.

That test, presumably, is "teh terror." But, of course, how do we know what the key test will be in 2040? What about those radioactive spiders in Indiana? What about the toxic gas released by Jupiter's seventeenth moon? Hey, who can possibly know what we'll be grappling with in 2040. If you had asked people in 1965 what we'd be wrestling with in 2005, how many of them would have said small groups of radicalized Muslims? How many would have said global warming? How many would have correctly identified the absurd relationship between Nick Lachey and Vanessa Minnillo? Exactly--very few indeed! Yet Rove feels, and certainly most conservatives would back him up, that he can forecast the general status of our national zeitgeist for the next 93 years. What a joke.