At 54, Clark has been through a lot of history. Growing up in the South, he has faint recollections of the struggles of the Civil Rights Era. He remembers the Cold War and later the Berlin Wall coming down.

And of course he's been through multiple recessions, including the current one. Now that we're in the Great Recession, people are having trouble seeing the future being as positive as the past. And with great drama, the press is writing articles proclaiming that America's day is setting.

Yet we Americans have an ingenuity that allows us to reinvent ourselves.

People only look at what we have lost, but not at what may be created in the future. Here's a simple example of what the consumer champ means: Apple profits for the most recent quarter jumped 47 percent on the strength of Mac and iPhone sales -- even at their premium prices.

Steve Jobs & Co. continually make products that are easy to use and have a lot of sizzle. And they did it with candlepower, using modern American ingenuity to make technology so approachable.

Therefore, t's important to understand that, yes, we have had mess-ups with crony capitalism and financial sector woes that led to widespread unemployment, but we're not done. We still have bright people and a marketplace that lets people succeed.

Apple is just one example of a company that came out of the doldrums. When Jobs came back, he helped Apple recreate excitement, innovation and uniqueness in the tech world.

So don't buy into the idea that we're done as a country.

What idea do you have to do something better, cheaper or in a more innovative way?