Let me explain what I mean by the realists. Take a look at this remarkable nation and, in particular, its great scientists and engineers: people who have won 34 per cent of all Nobel prizes, men and women who have created some of the most pioneering tech companies. Look at SpaceX reverse-parking a 71m steel cylinder (which had just travelled into space) on a gantry tower; at the medical start-ups finding mind-bending new treatments for what were once killer diseases.
Much of what the world takes for granted in technological terms today — search engines, smartphones, cloud computing — lie downstream of innovations that were invented or commercialised in America. I doubt that China — with its centralised limits on thought and discourse — will ever overtake this nation of diverse and hugely talented people, whose freedom to think novel thoughts, to question dogma and to challenge established ideas remains unparalleled.
And these men and women are grounded in reality because their ideas and products must survive contact with the empirical world. An engineer who makes a rocket with components of the wrong size will see their design crash and burn. The same is true of entrepreneurs, whether small shopkeepers or wannabe tech titans, who must convince customers to buy their products — or go bust. And it is this intimate feedback loop, combined with the culture of intellectual freedom, that explains why American tech, science and commerce remains the powerhouse of the world.
I am not saying America is perfect. We all know about the inequality, gun crime, border problems and more. My point is a little narrower and harks back to the history of this frontier nation. Today America is still pushing boundaries — yet no longer of geography but of knowledge. It is thrilling to be here, to visit the data centres, the start-ups, the science hubs; to observe a culture that is not paranoid about failing but seeks to try new things in order to succeed faster.
But alongside this bracing reality is a different domain that is, I fear, increasingly detached from reality. I am talking about the fantasy land known as Washington DC, a city with monuments to some of the finest statesmen in history that now plays host to a political class living in a dream world. Commentators here sagely contrast the Trump and Harris manifestos without seeming to notice that these candidates peddle the same delusion.
To see my point, look at the federal debt, a topic that is scarcely mentioned in Washington but hangs over the future like a shadow. Already more than 120 per cent of GDP, it is projected to rise under the Harris plan — according to the central estimate of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget — by $3.5 trillion. Trump’s tax cuts will add an even more eye-watering $7.5 trillion to the debt (two and a half times UK GDP). Just like in his first term, when Trump boasted of growth and rising share prices, he is perpetrating a conjuring trick: it is all based on debt, debt and more debt.
You may say: “So what?”, and in a sense you’d be right. In economics, unlike in engineering, problems can be pushed into the never-never, leaving future generations to pick up the pieces. The link with reality is more tenuous. This is as true in the monetary as in the fiscal domain, after an era in which the Fed (egged on by the political class) has printed ever more money to keep the party going, leading to capital misallocation and inflated asset prices, thereby driving an ever greater wedge between rich and poor. Many young people have given up hope of getting on the housing ladder.
But, despite the departure from reality in politics, the piper always has to be paid in the end. Indeed you can already see cracks appearing in the façade: in higher bond yields and ever more crippling interest payments (America will soon be spending more on servicing debt than on defence). And bear in mind that these debts will not be paid by politicians, but by entrepreneurs and engineers together with the army of immensely hard-working (and equally impressive) lower-paid workers who keep this system going.
The picture I am seeking to paint here is one of a pack of greyhounds carrying an ever more sclerotic political class on their backs. I went on a boat trip along the Potomac river on Friday and marvelled at the beauty of the capital: the Washington monument, the Capitol Building, the wonderful National Mall. It’s a remarkable place with a thrilling history, but the politicians and bureaucrats — despite their puffed-up self-importance — represent a growing threat to the republic, rather than acting as its guardians as they once did. Growth may be 2.5 per cent here (higher than in much of the developed world), but economists ask: why isn’t it higher, given the creative energy pulsing through the veins of this place and all the cheap oil and gas? Go to Washington and you instantly see why.
It is not even the detachment from reality but the corruption that hits this observer the hardest. Senators are mostly multimillionaires, and nobody asks why. The growing army of regulators go straight into the companies over which they once had “independent” oversight. This is stifling freedom, too, because it means that ageing, flabby companies fearful of the competition of free-market capitalism seek to rig the system against start-ups by erecting barriers to entry with the connivance of the political class. About two thirds of congressmen go on to become lobbyists, often working for special interests that funded their campaigns — a game played by Democrats and Republicans alike.
I’d agree with those who say that Trump (with his contempt for rules and norms) represents the greater immediate threat to the nation, but what has become clear to me is that both main parties are corrupt and parasitical. They are also comically oblivious to it. Indeed, so hysterically eager are they to point to the speck in the eye of the other side that they can’t see the log in their own. This, I suggest, is how America’s rigid, duopolistic political system can produce (from a nation boasting oodles of talent) perhaps the direst candidates in the history of the presidency: one who seems (to me) an ageing psychopath and another who struggles to complete normal English sentences.
Of course, many of us in Europe would love to have America’s problems. We have slower growth, rising debt and, yes, low-quality politicians too. In that sense the problems I’m describing are common to the western world. But after a week in America I leave with a single, dominant thought: never in history has there been such a vivid contrast between the brilliance of so many and the utter uselessness of so few. The American experiment is still alive and kicking, but there is a cancer in Washington that is out of control and may soon threaten to kill the host — whoever wins on Tuesday week.