Nearly every American has a foreboding the country they love is losing its way
John F. Kennedy, a young war hero running in his first congressional campaign, delivered a speech
on July 4, 1946, at Faneuil Hall in Boston. It was mostly patriotic
bromides about God and country. But it included a haunting meditation on
the American soul.
“A
nation’s character, like that of an individual, is elusive,” Kennedy
said. “It is produced partly by things we have done and partly by what
has been done to us. It is the result of physical factors, intellectual
factors, spiritual factors. … In peace, as in war, we will survive or
fail according to its measure.”
What
does our national portrait look like on this Independence Day? Many of
us see an angry, traumatized face, rather than the radiant glow of the
Founders. That’s the odd thing about this hyperpartisan moment: Nearly
every American, whatever their political perspective, has a foreboding
that the country they love is losing its way.
How
great is the danger of national decline? The Pentagon’s in-house think
tank, which has the mysterious name “Office of Net Assessment,”
commissioned a study of the problem by Michael J. Mazarr, a senior
political scientist at the Rand Corp. It was just published,
under the title, “The Societal Foundations of National
Competitiveness.” It’s hardly upbeat summer reading, but it can be
downloaded free online, and it’s well worth the time.
Mazarr’s
disturbing conclusion is that America is losing many of the seven
attributes he believes are necessary for competitive success: national
ambition and will; unified national identity; shared opportunity; an
active state; effective institutions; a learning and adaptive society;
and competitive diversity and pluralism.
Let’s
start with American ambition and confidence, once our most notable
trait. “Writers and scholars alike … have argued that the spirit of
adventurousness, experimentation and determination to remake the future
have all ebbed in the American character,” Mazarr writes.
He
notes polling that three-quarters of those surveyed in 2019 were
unhappy about where the country is headed. A 2018 study reported that
more than 60 percent of those polled had “more fear than hope.” And
Americans across party lines don’t trust our country’s institutions. A
2018 poll registered only 10 percent who were “very satisfied” with how
democracy is working; it also found that two-thirds of respondents agree
that “public officials don’t care what I think.”
National
unity and cohesion are declining, Mazarr believes. A country that was
effective (sometimes brutally so) at assimilating diverse groups is more
fragmented, and the idea of America as a “melting pot” seems archaic to
many people. But our separate identities come at a cost: “A country
with a rapidly diversifying population — though it gains competitive
advantages from this diversity — will also face greater hurdles to
sustaining a sense of coherent national identity,” Mazarr writes.
America
remains an opportunity society, in principle, but Mazarr sees growing
constraints. He cites the evidence of rising inequality. Between 2001
and 2016, the median net worth of the middle class fell 20 percent, and
that of the working class plummeted 45 percent. He notes evidence that
in each generation since 1945, children have been less likely to make
more money than their parents.
These
problems are obvious, but government hasn’t been willing or able to
correct them. Mazarr quotes a World Bank assessment of gradually
declining “governance effectiveness” in the United States over the past
20 years. It isn’t just a government problem, though. Private-sector
productivity has been stagnant for decades, and corporations struggle
with bureaucracy and bloat. Universities spend nearly as much on
administration as teaching, and administrative costs account for a third
of total health-care spending.
Part
of America’s DNA is the idea that our problems are fixable. I’m still
in that party of optimists. But I found Mazarr’s conclusions chilling.
When countries begin to fail, he argues, “it is a negative-feedback
loop, a poisonous synergy.” The energy that could reverse decline
becomes sapped by mistrust and misinformation. Some people get so angry
they want to burn the house down and start over.
We’re
not at that cataclysmic point yet. I see positive signs in the slow but
growing Republican willingness to challenge Donald Trump, and in the
broad, bipartisan anger at the extremism of recent Supreme Court
decisions. But bad things can happen to good countries, as our modern
history shows.
The
American character was once easy to define. We were a young, optimistic
nation, fusing “one out of many,” as the Latin phrase engraved on our
coins puts it. Wherever Americans had come from, they embraced the
aspiration for “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” written in
the Declaration of Independence. May it ever be so.