Tomorrow County Executive Jack Doyle will hold an event worth having -- and effect worth hailing. He calls it the Economic Summit. It will involve 400 business, government, and academic leaders. Already Monroe boasts Upstate's lowest unemployment rate, and highest job growth beside New York's. Last year Rochester passed Buffalo for the state's second-highest total. Question. How do we build on what's begun?

One way is by going what Doyle has done. Increase the county's Manufacturing Partnership that trains low-income workers. And the Prosperity Partnership that seeks to pirate skilled workers from high-tech havens like Boston and San Jose.

Keep property taxes stable, and overall taxes fairly low. Keep county spending down. Slash red tape. Shift government jobs to the private sector. Too many Northeastern counties treat business as a leper. Doyle has treated it as a helper.

What else? Build the big-ticket items that we've talked about since the Twelfth of Never. Promote AirTran and other low-fare planes that spur travel and tourism. Build the Infotonics Center in Monroe County to link universities, jobs, and hospitals. Enlarge the county's Empire Enterprise Zone to cut taxes and spawn jobs.

The business of business is business. On Tuesday, Monroe County needs to help business thrive. This is Curt Smith.

"Presidents, like great French restaurants," said the writer Douglass Cater, "have an ambiance all their own." John Kennedy's merged PT 109, Profiles in Courage, and touch football at Hyannisport. George Bush's ambiance linked pork rinds, a parachute, that vision thing, and a certain eldest son. The son, in turn, denotes straight talk, wife Laura, brush cleared at his ranch, and a breezy charm. Bush's image is becoming clear. But what about his grade?

Last week George W. ended his first year as President. In foreign policy, few leaders have been more fixed on beating an enemy, or resolute about how. Give Bush an A. Economically, Congress passed his tax cut. Good. But spurned his stimulus package. Bad. Bush should more overtly paint Democrats as tax and spenders. Doing that, his B becomes A-.

Bush is weakest about social and cultural issues -- the character of a Nation. Nine million illegal aliens live among us. Bush should crack down, not wink at law-breaking. He should also attack the political correctness of bilingualism, multiculturalism, and pluralism gone mad. You cannot unify a Nation of warring special interests. Culturally, socially, give Bush a D.

At Yale, Bush was a gentleman's C student. Overall as president give him a B-. Actually, the only grade that counts is Election Day 2004. For now, the real grade is incomplete. This is Curt Smith.

A few weeks back I told how Ivy League schools can't help blaming America. Better poison ivy, I said. Several of you disagreed. Most said, "Right on." Now comes fresh fodder for whose who say that the Ivy League makes Jane Fonda look patriotic.

Recently the Luntz Research Company interviewed 151 Ivy League professors -- asking the best president of the last 40 years. Their favorite, at 26 percent: the man who did perjury, raped the Constitution, pricked Monica, and let Osama get away. Next came John Kennedy with 17 percent -- despite his short reign, skimpy record, and morals as bad as Clinton's.

Can't get worse? It can. 15 percent chose Lyndon Johnson best -- apparently for letting cities burn, inflation rage, counterculture tower, and Viet Nam corrode. And worse. 13 percent chose Jimmy Carter -- for giving us malaise, an energy crisis, 20 percent inflation, and hostage humiliation abroad.

Evidently Ivy professors lived in a different country than you and I. 4 percent chose the man, Ronald Reagan, who won the Cold War without firing a shot. 2 percent picked former President Bush, under whom Communism died. Richard Nixon reshaped the world. 1 percent chose him. George W? Zero -- like the zero tolerance most many professors have.

If you want your kids misled and misinformed, send them to the Ivys. As for me, bring on the poison ivy. At least its sickness is of the skin, not mind. This is Curt Smith.

Tonight President Bush will get in a car, journey to Capital Bill, and deliver his State of the Union address. The ritual dates back to George Washington, who each year reported on the state of America. It's parts pomp, ceremony, hypocrisy, and lore.

Tonight klieg lights will domineer the ancient capital. Democrats and Republicans will lay down arms. Even liberals will crowd the aisle to shake the conservative President's hands. Many would walk a mile for a camera, or down their grandmother down for a photo-op in the sun. Then they will sit as Bush outlines what dad called that vision thing. The unity will be gone by morning. Too bad.

Tonight Senators and Representatives will be on best behavior. Exception: Richard Nixon, booed by Democrats in 1974. He resigned seven months later. Bush will call the state of the union fine. Exception: Gerald Ford, 1975, saying the state of the union is not good. He was not elected the following year.

I wrote several of President Bush's state of the unions, and wouldn't wish it on my fiercest enemy. Bureaucrats insist on including their pet project. The speech is always in peril of becoming a laundry list. With luck, the speech you write makes the President look as noble as, say, George Washington. For us, it's a chance to renew a rite nearly as old as the Republic itself.

9 o'clock, tonight. Be there, aloha, from Curt Smith.

Some events just grip us. World War II. Richard Nixon's Presidency. For reasons I have yet to grasp, Madonna's ccareer Then, of course, what Southerners still call "the recent unpleasantness" -- recent being 140 years ago. In 1982, a biography on Gettsyburg listed nearly 3,000 books. Other battles rank close behind. Fredericksburg. The Wilderness. Sherman's march to the sea. Why, from such a distance, does the Civil War so compel?

First, it intrigues for the same macabre reasons as September 11. Both happened here, on our soil, to us. Each spilt American blood. Each had heroes and villains. The North regarded Grant as a totem of tough, straight talk. The South revered -- still does -- Robert E. Lee for gallantry and courage. September 11's black and white hats are equally clear. Osama Ben Ladin is, to quote George W. Bush, "the evil one." Firefighters and cops showed what Hemingway called "gave under pressure" -- grace to the last.

The Civil War pitted family against family. It was, as Wellington said of Waterloo, "a close-run thing." The South could gave won. Reverse Antietam or Gettysburg, and the North might have sued for peace. We would be a different people, and Nation. The world would be changed. Al wars involve the red of blood. We still fix on the blue and the gray. Which is the literature and fascination of the War Between the States will only continue to grow. This is Curt Smith.

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