On a wintry night in New England a half century ago, the ambassador of Lebanon, Charles Malik, delivered a penetrating address on relations between East and West that seems especially pertinent today as a divided and troubled America goes into the New Year.

"The challenges confronting the Western world," Malik said, "are basically three: The challenge of communism, the challenge of the rising East, and the challenge of the internal forces of decay."

In the ensuing years, the West, led by the United States, has overcome the challenge of communism and consigned it to the dustbin of history. Communism is a mere shadow of what it once was in China and Vietnam and has left North Korea and Cuba in economic shambles.

The West, again led by the U.S., has gradually met the challenge of the rising East, sometimes well and other times not so well. Japan, India, and Taiwan have evolved their own democracies while South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia are struggling to find their way to stability. (The title of this column, The Rising East, is derived from Malik's speech.)

Now the challenge of internal decay is upon the West, notably the U.S. Perhaps nowhere is that more evident than in the American presidency. If present trends continue, when a new president takes office on Jan. 20, 2009, Americans will have suffered from 16 years of mediocrity in the White House.

Democratic President Bill Clinton, only the second in that office to have been impeached, was not convicted and, like President Andrew Johnson after the Civil War, was allowed to finish his term. But he left behind a legacy stained with scandal and sexual misbehavior.

Republican President George Bush has led the nation into disaster in Iraq, failed to devise a coherent policy for dealing with other foreign and security issues, neglected all manner of domestic issues, and burdened the nation with enormous debt.

Both President Clinton, who dodged the Vietnam draft, and President Bush, whose service in the Air National Guard was murky, have weakened U.S. military power. The Democrat sliced away the buildup engineered by President Ronald Reagan and the Republican has failed in his pledge to transform the armed forces, besides letting them flounder in the quagmire of Iraq.

Both presidents were elected with unimpressive pluralities of the eligible voters and both proved to be divisive. Conservatives loathed President Clinton and liberals equally loathe President Bush. A striking contrast in seeking unity: Republican President Gerald Ford, who did much to heal the nation after Watergate and who died last week, and Democratic President Jimmy Carter, whose first words as president were to thank President Ford.

Presidents Clinton and Bush are not alone in their flaws. Members of Congress have been caught in scandal and dishonesty. Prominent business executives have been convicted of fraud. Scholars and journalists, including several at this writer's former employer, The New York Times, have been disgraced. Europe has experienced much the same in its politicians, executives, and intellectuals.

Taken together, several polls have recently underscored the anxieties of Americans, with 60 percent or more saying they are dissatisfied with the direction of the nation.

Ambassador Malik, who spoke at Dartmouth College in March 1951, had the foresight even then to offer America and the West a way out of this morass. "It is given to America to awaken," he said, "and to help herself and the rest of us to a new wondrous realization. The prerequisites for this creative awakening are all there."

The ambassador reeled off an inventory of American strengths: "In her vast technological possibilities, in the boundless energy of her people, in her living community with Western Europe, in her temporal extension as an integral heir of the positive Western tradition for four thousand years, in the opening up of new frontiers of the mind and spirit now that her spatial frontiers have been pushed to the limit, and in the accent in her own distinctive tradition on responsible freedom and on the infinite importance of the individual human person, in these objective conditions you have the necessary material for America's great opportunity."

"What is needed now," Malik asserted, "is the voice of leadership: clear, simple, bold, self-denying, convinced and therefore convincing, speaking with authority because firmly grounded in the truth."

His final words seem particularly relevant for an anxious America on the verge of the New Year: "The greatest need of the moment is the authoritative articulation of what America really stands for."

Richard Halloran is a Honolulu-based journalist and former New York Times correspondent in Asia. His column appears weekly in Sunday's Focus section.