Whether or not you’re buying the sudden, unlikely, belief in American Exceptionalism that Barack Obama displayed during his State of the Union speech, one thing is clear. However great we, as a nation are, we cannot “win the future.”

In his address, Obama spent a lot of time talking about our “Sputnik Moment.” In the mid 50’s, the United States was on the receiving end of a space-race smack down. The Russians had been the first to put a satellite in orbit. Soon after, they would outpace us again, by putting a human in space and returning them safely to Earth. Despite the objections from Democrats like Walter Mondale, America funneled its collective will into rectifying the situation. According to the President, we had recognized our “Sputnik moment” and were on our way to “winning the future” by beating Russia to the Moon.

That was 50 years ago. In the following decades, we maintained our space-age dominance through multiple lunar missions, Skylab, the space shuttle, and unparalleled advances in satellite technology. We’re now seeing our leadership status erode.

When George Bush left office, we were on pace to return to the moon – ahead of our new space-rivals, the Chinese. Barack Obama put an end to that program. He gutted NASA’s budget and all but eliminated manned space flight, while paying lip service to a nebulous, underfunded, Mars mission that many believe will never come to fruition. Liberals regularly tell us that there’s nothing a human can do in space that a machine can’t. According to the scientific mind of Barney Frank, “Manned space travel adds far more cost than is justified in terms of scientific return.”

Predictably, while the left decimates American space exploration, China is ramping up its Space initiative. The CNSA (China National Space Administration) is aggressively pursuing a series of orbital missions and moon shots, which will be funded by the interest paid on the money Barack Obama is currently borrowing. As a result, where space exploration is concerned, China has become the new Russia, and once again we’ve fallen behind.

Only this time, we’ve done so by choice.

Barack Obama says we’re at “a Sputnik moment” – this time, due to our financial situation. We find ourselves being fiscally outpaced by a hostile foreign government, to which we’re deeply indebted. We’ve got to turn the situation around. According to his State of the Union address, we simply need the will to make it happen. Disastrously, the one man in America who seems to lack that will is the President himself.

A day after the State of the Union address, we learned that 2011 will see the United States perched precariously atop a record breaking 1.5 trillion dollar deficit. How are we going to deal with it? We’re going to borrow more money from China. We’re going to fund our chief competitor.

Just as Obama has forfeited our place in the space race, he is willfully relinquishing our place as a global economic superpower because he lacks the willpower necessary to embrace his own “sputnik moment” and make the decisions necessary to fix the situation. Instead, he’s marching down a path of “investment” in green energy and high speed rail. In short, he’s embracing the same old left-wing, big government positions, digging us deeper and deeper into the hole.

Even if, by some strange miracle, tomorrow saw Barack Obama change course and embrace every tenant of fiscal conservatism the fight would go on. Yes, we would quickly return to dominance, but there will always be the next competitor, the next country, trying to knock us out of the top spot. “Winning the future” implies that an endgame exists where it clearly doesn’t. It’s a problem around which dyed-in-the-wool liberals, like Barack Obama, have a hard time wrapping their heads. We will never be able to “win the future” because the future is always in motion.

We can however, prepare ourselves for success by cultivating an environment in which achievement is possible. Obama’s brand of anti- entrepreneur, anti-individual, liberalism has been tried, repeatedly, and has served only to neuter our country’s greatest assets.

Recognizing this fact is Barack Obama’s true “Sputnik moment.”

Sadly, he continutes to prove that he’s absolutely unwilling to embrace it.