This is not, technically, an existential crisis. No foreign army is about to invade the United States. The Soviets are 20 years gone, and Russian ICBMs are now aimed at open ocean. The nation isn’t in a depression. There’s been no run on the banks, no Hooverville sprouting on the Mall.
And yet this is a low moment. America is in a funk that’s being felt around the world.
“Downgrade” is the verb of the week. Our debt is now second-rate if you believe the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s. The country is mired in a seemingly endless financial crisis. It has an economy that doesn’t want to get out of bed in the morning. The two major political parties seem to inhabit different, non-intersecting dimensions of reality.
The whole world is watching, and it is rather appalled.
“We have been for decades now the number one global economic power. But an increasing question mark is whether we are going to remain one,” said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter — a president who famously spoke of a national “crisis of confidence” in what would turn out to be his only term in the White House.
“Our friends are worried about us because their future depends on us. Our less-friendly neighbors abroad are probably snickering and enjoying this a little bit but also worried,” Brzezinski said.
Some foreign critics have seen openings for roundhouse blows. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Americans have been “living like parasites off the global economy.” A state-run Chinese news agency editorialized about the United States’ “dangerously irresponsible” debt load.
The downgrading of U.S. debt may be more symbolic than empirically significant, but it gives one small data point to those who argue that America isn’t what it used to be, that it is an empire in twilight.
It was 70 years ago that Time magazine founder Henry Luce introduced the concept of “The American Century.” The term was ideologically loaded and did not wear well with those who feared, rather than celebrated, American hegemony. The naming rights to the new century seem to be up for grabs. Today, there are a slew of books that ponder a “post-American” epoch.
There is also a rash of books from Republican politicians that include attacks on President Obama, accusing him of not believing in “American exceptionalism, ” the idea that the United States is destined, either through constitutional genius, geography, culture, divine providence or some combination thereof, to play a unique and outsized role in human civilization.
In his book “No Apology: Believe in America,” GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney writes that Obama believes American decline is inevitable and “sees his task as somehow managing that decline, making the transition to post-superpower status as smooth as possible, helping Americans understand and adjust to their new circumstances.”
When asked during a trip abroad in 2009 whether he believed in American exceptionalism, Obama said, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” This only drew more criticism from Republicans.
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