The senescence of the United States

About five years ago my father-in-law, then in his mid-80s, of sound mind, gave my wife power of attorney and turned over management of his financial affairs, after 60 years of capably managing them himself.  "That's how it often works," his financial adviser told us. "They're very hands-on, and then suddenly they let go."

That came to mind as I read this Times editorial board review of Trump's "leadership":

In short order, Mr. Trump has pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, ceding leadership on trade in Asia to China; refused to reaffirm the mutual defense commitment that has been the bedrock of trans-Atlantic security for half a century, forcing America’s European allies to think about dealing with threats like Russia on their own; and abandoned a landmark agreement on climate change signed by 190-plus other nations, ceding leadership on the issue to Europe and China, and, in the bargain, forfeiting the rewards of participating in a worldwide clean energy economy that the agreement will bring.

I'm not thinking of Trump here, but of the United States. Maybe, collectively, we got tired, our faculties sapped by 40 years of galloping inequality and risk shift, as we fell behind much of the developed world in education, opportunity, health care and income growth and outpaced our peers (all afflicted to some degree) in letting the superrich capture a growing share of national wealth and, concomitantly, power. The portion of our population mired in job loss, income stagnation, family and community disintegration and right-wing gaslighting reached critical mass.

Decay...decline...yada...we're fine (?)

Taking a cue from E.J. Dionne, Andrew Sullivan asks his readers to weigh in as to moments when they "realized we were late imperial Rome," adding, "Personally, I think it was some moment between the Congress's assent to torture in 2006 and when Sarah Palin was selected as a serious vice-presidential nominee in 2008."  The results are (by definition) impressionist:

The Clinton impeachment, hands down.  The long list of ridiculous investigations leading up to it were bad enough, but taking a step designed to remove an elected President over a personal affair showed that the view of politics over country now ruled the day.  The proceedings were political Kabuki Theater at its basest.

Well, maybe -- though I also must admit, net admirer of Clinton though I am, that I feel the force of Sandy Levinson's assertion that Clinton's "cold-blooded lying" (ultimately admitted) to constituents and Cabinet set an perhaps equally troubling precedent.


I am wary, though, of the decline narrative. It's hard to take the measure of an era, or put bounds around a given set of years as an "era," and harder yet to peg that era within a longer narrative. "You are too shallow, Hastings, much too shallow,/To sound the bottom of the after-times" (Henry IV, Part 2, IV ii). That's true for all of us.

I do fear that the U.S. has lost political functionality in two waves, one coming in with the Gingrich Congress in 1994 and the second with the Bush torture crew. The first destroyed norms that enabled the parties to work together, however adversarially; the second severely weakened our civil liberties and abused the powers of the executive branch.  Still, U.S. politics has probably been in dysfunctional mode more often than not since founding; the one virtue of our democracy is self-correction, and I'm hopeful for another round of that under Obama's stewardship. (I admit though that there too my faith goes wobbly; I am susceptible to the Krugman view of the Obama administration, damned repeatedly by half measures and failure to strongly rebuff GOP lunacy. See, for example, Joe Nocera's frustration today with Obama's failure thus to take a stand for Elizabeth Warren to head the fledgling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.)

The next Republican president

About fifteen years ago, as I've recounted perhaps one time too many, I read a biography of Eisenhower and it dawned on me that a) for Democrats to win every election was not only impossible but undesirable, and that b) my political perspective had hitherto been rather limited, since I not only had never voted for a Republican for president but could not imagine doing so. I began mentally testing myself: could I vote for a Republican? Under what circumstances? (Asking myself the same question now, looking back on my life as a voter, I could make a strong case for George H.W. Bush -- who expertly helped feather down the Soviet Union, rolled back Saddam's Kuwait grab, and took a major step toward the balanced budget achieved in the Clinton years.)

My timing was spectacularly bad.  I don't recall if this little epiphany occurred before or after the 1994 election and the full Gingrichization of the GOP.  But in the intervening years, the GOP has hardened into the party of unlimited tax cuts and unlimited deficits, reckless unilateral warmongering, relentless immigrant-bashing and destruction of core civil liberties.

In recent weeks, as I've watched Obama go into post-election remission while the Republicans seize the whip hand on the Bush tax cuts and shamelessly hold New Start hostage, a kind of mirror-mantra has taken shape: the country can't afford another Republican president.  That is, not until the GOP has been chastened by further electoral setbacks and forced to acknowledge a few elemental truths: you can't fix the structural deficit without increasing tax revenue, democracy can't survive nonstop further concentration of wealth, the U.S. can't remain the world's sole wealthy country that fails to offer universal healthcare or afford to leave medical inflation untamed, our response to every threat abroad can't be a unilateral preemptive strike, and our civil liberties can't survive long-term when the government sanctions torture and shreds the fourth amendment (Obama has helped sustained the latter outrage, but as long as Republicans bay relentlessly for terrorist blood, Democrats will never roll back  the all of Bush's infringements).

America for Dummies

To Susan Jacoby, the latest curmudgeon to lament The Dumbing of America, I offer this this rejoinder in an eternal dialogue:

"Decay, decay, decay,
Decline, decline, decline..."

"Yada yada yada,
we're fine, we're fine, we're fine."