President Obama is behind the times. His State of the Union address on Tuesday talked about China’s emergence as America’s “Sputnik moment.” For a majority of his younger audience, the reaction was a resounding, “What?” As the Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri put it, “What’s so important about Sputnik?”  She found out, after a fashion:

Petri goes on to give a cogent and amusing critique of why this generation can’t have a Sputnik moment, but there’s an even deeper problem with the President’s use of the term.  Just when was the Sputnik moment?  The original was October 4, 1957.  It was a single, clearly obvious threat to America’s technological and industrial dominance.  When was the single, identifiable moment when China posed a threat to us?