Can the Midwest Regain Its Economic Clout?

From the Chicago Tribune, January 6, 2008:

I found a Midwest where the states, all relics of 19th Century politics, are too small and parochial to even understand global economic trends, much less adapt to them; where all strategic thinking, dominated by the great state universities, stays locked within state lines. I found experts--scholars, politicians, business people--who knew their own state's global challenges but had almost no idea what was happening next door.