Hm. . .would we call this the Platinum Age? Renewed with the glory of the Silver, but an age with a unique feel all it's own regardless? I dunno.
Quick side note: There is already a period of comics history referred to as "The Platinum Age" --the period from about 1900 to 1935 or so before the publication of Action #1. Even if this is not a universally acknowledged fact, it would still tend to confuse many comics fans who take their comics history lessons from the Overstreet Price Guide (and there is a lot of good info in there!
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As to the issue of Superman's (split-)personality, morality, powers, etc:
I have always found the character to be essentially the same. The Silver-Age version, as written by everyone from Siegel to Maggin, was a flawed character with god-like powers and hyper-competence (to use an idea from Great Rao's conversation with the author of the new Superboy text stories). The post-Byrne/post-Crisis version of the character is slightly more flawed and slightly less powerful, to the point where he seems essentially the same as every other hero to most fans (indeed, it was deemed editorially acceptable to have him a murder a villain --a return to an aspect of his Golden Age roots, I might add). But to most people outside the comics fanbase, the two versions were essntially the same, no? I agree, the Silver Age version (or a contemporary equivalent, a la Morrison) makes more sense both editorially and from a marketing standpoint, but I don't really think that the kid who carried a Superman lunchbox to school in 1988 thought of the image on his pail very much differently than a kid in 1968 (unless 1988 was the year they introduced the mullet version of SM --a true aesthetic abomination :evil: ).
And just for the record, I do not, and we should not, think of George Washington or George Bush, or nation states in general, as morally inspirational characters in the same league or sense as fictional paragons of virtue like Superman or legendary religious or mythical figures. Nation States can only be moral actors in the negative sense without reduction to "lesser evil" politics. (The exception to this is when a cartoonist like Frank Miller wants to make a philosophical or satiric point about the character and US foreign policy; or when we talk about Superman not as an idea but as a corporate property, the product of a morally ambiguous creative process.)
As to the issue of the Clark-Superman split, I think this is an overrated, ultimately futile (but still fun!) line of inquiry. What is exquisite about the character(s) is the unknowable, contradictory nature of the duo persona, not the cut-and-dried idea that Superman is one thing and Clark is another, or that Clark is real and Superman is fake (or vice versa). The duality was never dealt with to my satisfaction during the Silver Age despite any number of editorial assertions to the contrary. And it is this exquisite duality which appeals to the vast majority of people, I would venture (Tarantino's Kill Bill script doesn't answer the question, it stirs the debate in the public's mind). Every writer seemed to have a slightly different take, and the nature of the character(s) changed slightly as the stories required. (Another interesting aspect of the character to endlessly speculate about is the morality of Clark/Superman's "deception".)
For myself, when I am a fan/reader, I identify with both Clark and Superman to varying degrees, and have a hard time separating their "personalities" and motivations in my mind (now or during the act of reading/watching). The Superman who is an isolated alien has a lot in common with the schlub reporter who has a secret life, even if one or the other is just a facade. Both characters have problems of a personal nature, usually shared, but often separate, all rolled up in one delicious schizophrenic ball.
And who cares what any one editor, writer, or corporation asserts! Superman is bigger than all of us at this point.
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