I was thinking of the Horseshoe yesterday, and the visionaries that built it, as I watched the last of this country's space shuttle launch. From now on, we will send our astronauts, if they go, into space to the International Space Station on a Russian Spacecraft. The greatest nation in the world is going to depend on the Russians to get us to the next frontier.

As the thought of that sunk in, I pondered back to the story of The 'Shoe.

We used to be the nation of visionaries. We developed the Land Grant system of universities - the origin of our own beloved OSU- which gave the greatest number the greatest access to higher education that the world has ever known, and spawned the research and extension system that make us the best fed people in the history of the world. We gave the world light. We gave it flight. We put it on wheels. For better or worse, we split the atom. We built the interstate highway system. We went to the moon. We won the war that saved the world and then sent our heroes to the college on the GI Bill. We did all of that with our can do, think big, vision!

Where has that vision gone today? It seems instead of can do, we have a climate of can't do. Can't afford to educate our kids properly. Can't afford research. Can't fund our Universities. Can't afford to develop high-speed public transportation. Can't afford to see everyone has medical care. Our discourse is all about cutting what we can do and ever expanding what we can't do.

What if Lynn St. John had had that attitude? What if Thomas French thought that way? What if William Oxley Thompson bought into that line of thinking? What if they had listened to the naysayers of the day who told them they would never fill it, that it cost too much, that is was too extravagant, that it was too too too.... Would we have one of the most recognizable symbols in all of college sports today? Would OSU be one of the largest public universities in the country today? One of the best business schools? Would it have one of the largest alumni organizations in the country? Would thousands be being cured of cancer at the James?

Had they not built the 'Shoe, and the notoriety it has brought this University, what would the rest of the University be today? What would Columbus be? I thought of all that yesterday as I watched the last launch, and I listened to our own John Glenn talk about his first orbit of this earth (which I watched live long ago as a child) and talk too about our lack of can do.

We need some can do leaders. It is time to build some more Horseshoes.