Chapter 8

Is the American century of dominance and leadership is coming to an end, just as the British Empire began to crumble in the 1900s? When Cornell West spoke at USCA in the fall of 1999, he noted that perhaps one day history will record this as a long period of decline in America. Perhaps the eternal forces of entropy (remember that idea from the section on Machiavelli?) are at work doing the inevitable. Young people have not been attracted to public service for a long time. Most citizens pay little attention to public affairs. After a brief period of anger and rejuvenation after 9/11, we once again abandoned almost any notion of public service in favor of private individual gain. The most distinctive characteristics of our political culture, even after voting for “change” in 2008, have been cynicism, ignorance, and anger.

Some observers trace contemporary discontent back to the Kennedy assassination, after which things seemed to go sour for the nation that emerged from WWII as the leader of the free world. This list of depressing events is enough to sour most anyone on politics: the King assassination, a peaceful nonviolent civil rights movement began to turn violence and anger in the streets, Vietnam and Johnson's tragically flawed presidency, Robert Kennedy's assassination, Watergate, the humiliation of President Carter and the Iranian hostage crisis and economic stagflation, Reagan and Bush and soaring budget deficits and the Iran-Contra affair, Clinton’s "Monica-gate," Bush 43 seemed to bog us down in deepening quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan that we are borrowing money to finance at new record levels, and the great recession that began under Bush but continued far too long for most Americans under Obama.

As I was updating this unit in 2005, the national debt reached $8 trillion, and the deficit for fiscal year 2005-6, which ended in October of 2006, is over $200 billion. As of the 2008 update the deficit for 2008-9 was projected at well over $500 billion and a deficit in the range of $10 trillion. For the 2009 and 2010 editions, the deficit, driven by the declining revenues of the “Great Recession” and stimulus spending along with spending on our two ongoing wars, project at about one and a half trillion for just one year! That will require raising the national debt up to about $13 trillion, with no real end in sight given the very slow growth that is taking place in 2010.

A brief review of recent elections reveals the mood of the nation since the first Bush presidency.

During the presidential election of 1992 many indicators suggested that fundamental changes had taken place in the political environment. Voters were more willing than ever to consider some new alternative like Ross Perot. Unusual numbers expressed disdain for any of the choices offered them. Dissatisfaction with President Bush ran deeper than just how well he was handling the economy. Four of every five citizens expressed dissatisfaction with the general direction of the country. People were feeling pessimistic about the future of the nation, fearing that things would not be improving for the next generation as it had for them. They no longer believed in either Reagan's "shining city on the hill" or in G.W. Bush's "thousand points of light.” (Every president tries to create a positive metaphor for what their term in office means.) They wanted change, but were quite cynical about easy painless promises of Bill Clinton to bring about that change.

These fears were captured in two popular books of 1992, William Greider's Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy, and Don Barlett and James Steele's America: What Went Wrong. Both books focused on economic and social realities that were giving root to deeper feelings of cynicism. The list sounded like one of Clinton's or Perot's campaign speeches. The middle class was shrinking while the few were getting rich on unproductive leveraged buy-outs on Wall Street. We were losing some of our best manufacturing jobs to Mexico (Ross Perot talked about a “giant sucking sound” of jobs leaving the nation) and other nations with cheaper labor costs and fewer environmental regulations. Our education system was failing to produce as good a work force as in other nations. Quality of life statistics, like weekly hours worked, per capita income, infant mortality, vacation time, longevity, were causing alarm. We were far from number one in all the categories in which we once excelled. The recession of the early 1990s was destroying good white-collar jobs, not just the usual more marginal blue collar jobs. These jobs were being replaced with lower paying and even less satisfying jobs. Along with job loss, the cost of health care was going through the roof. Worse yet, more and more Americans were losing health insurance. The deficit was getting so big that even average people began wondering about how our children would ever pay for it. We began to feel guilty about what we would leave our children. Our balance of trade with other nations was growing worse and worse. How could we survive if we made fewer things ourselves and were buying goods on credit? To make matters worse, much of that credit came from the same nations that were also selling us things. Japan had become the world's largest banking power. Tokyo was the banking center of the world, not New York.

If a lot of that sounds familiar, you have been paying attention to the news more recently, as many of the same things are happening over again. To cite a very local example, the price of steel went up so much because of Chinese demand for steel and the increasing price of energy required to make steel that USC Aiken had to delay the construction of the convocation center while the school sought more money and trimmed plans on the building.

Ironically, just at the time that we had celebrated our Cold War victory over our greatest adversary in the world, we found that we were falling behind other nations in non-military areas of competition. Just when we should have been able to enjoy the fruits of our victory, we began to feel as though we were losers.

Even President G.W. Bush acknowledged that, yes, these were problems, but the situation was not quite all that bad and his plan would do a better job in dealing with these problems. The voters didn't buy the Bush reelection line and voted for change in 1992. Bill Clinton promised a “bridge to the 21^st century.”

By the 1994 midterm elections the picture had changed a little, but not enough to save the Democrats from suffering the wrath of voters who were still angry, perhaps even more angry. President Clinton and the Democratic controlled Congress were unable to deliver on some key promises, such as overhauling our health care system. While the deficit had declined notably and while economic growth had taken place and jobs had increased, the average American family was in worse economic shape than when Clinton had come into power. Family income had dropped by about $300. People were working longer hours just to stay in place. Despite all the rhetoric about social issues (social conservatives were going to oppose Democrats and Clinton regardless of what they accomplished), the bottom line with the independent swing voters who usually determine the outcomes of elections was that it still was "the economy, stupid." We were clearly unhappy in having to make the personal sacrifices necessary to match competition from around the world in the new global economy.

The O.J. Simpson trial and Louis Farrakam's sometimes racist rhetoric along with continued conflicts over affirmative action programs, challenges to recently drawn representational districts that increased African-American representation in legislatures and Congress, and church burnings all raised racial tensions. Poll after poll revealed that whites and blacks saw the nation and their life chances differently. The rhetoric seemed to be less civil--more along the lines of let us shout at each other rather than let us reason together. (Again, this should sound familiar to those of you reading this in 2009and 10—again we see a rise in incivility in our political discourse.) President Clinton's efforts to start a national dialogue on race was replaced with a national dialogue on his sexual behavior. In September 1998 the Presidential Race Relations Commission issued its final report, calling for more dialogue (ho hum!). Radio and tv talk shows exploited these tensions more for profit than for resolution. We were drawn to listen and watch these rhetorical muggings just as the curious are drawn to crime scenes—all the while expressing how revolting the whole thing was and how revolting the media were for showing all of these negative things. The 1998 election was a most dispiriting affair, resulting in little change. Republicans held their slim majority in the Senate and lost a handful of seats in the House of Representatives so that they only held a slim majority there. Turnout was again very low.

Politics in 1999 was even more depressing. The new House of Representatives proceeded to impeach the President for his revolting personal behavior even though conviction and removal from office was impossible. The Senate, as expected, failed to convict along nearly straight party lines, but even a handful of Republicans voted against conviction, feeling that the house had over-reached, turning personal failures into "high crimes and misdemeanors." Senate Republicans used their majority again to defeat the efforts at campaign finance reform by filibustering the bill to death. Democrats and a few reform-minded Republicans like Senator John McCain were unable to get the required 60 votes to cut off filibuster.

In 2000 Democrats were not at all excited about Clinton heir-apparent Vice President Gore, whose once squeaky clean image was sullied in the fundraising efforts of 1996. They were flirting with the intellectual yet dull former Senator Bill Bradley, who left politics for the same reasons many people disliked politics—it had become too uncivil and too dirty. Disaffected Democrats and liberals turned to Ralph Nader, who had no chance of winning, but did nave a chance of helping the Republicans win states like Oregon, Washington, and California. Many of these felt that a loss was just what the Democrats needed to wake them up. They felt that four years of Republican rule would wake the country up to the need for real change. The Republicans had been down that road with their own fringe groups in the 1990s, and it cost them two elections when they tried to move to the right with Pat Buchanan. As you know, the Democrats would be learning that hard lesson over the next couple of elections.

In 2000 the Republicans just wanted a winner, no matter how much it cost, so they sent record millions to George Bush, Jr., who represented a murky new brand of Republicanism, the "compassionate conservative." Pat Buchanan, seeing little chance of challenging Bush, dropped out of the Republican primaries to try and be the Ross Perot of 2000, possibly taking millions of conservative voters with him. But polls indicated that he would barely get 1% of the vote and would have little impact at all on the outcome. The polls were right on Pat.

With no great crises facing the nation (a strong economy, relative peace, lower crime rates, welfare roles down, and any Social Security or Medicare crisis way off in the future), it appeared that the election would be very close with most people simply voting on the basis of personality--which candidate they felt to be most likeable--despite Gore's cry that this is not a popularity contest. Few people beyond strong partisans seemed very happy with their choice. Put in the framework of critical election theory, this was to be another de-aligning election with some short-term deviation because of “Clinton fatigue” over more scandal.

Turnout in the 2000 election was up slightly, up to 51%, but that was only because the election was so close. Close elections always bring out voters. Gore did win a bare plurality of the popular vote (a half million votes), but lost the electoral college because of ballot design and vote counting incompetence in Florida and a U.S. Supreme Court that asserted itself into the process in a most unusual and partisan way and Ralph Nader taking votes that mostly would have gone to Gore. Conservatives on the Supreme Court who had always stood for state’s rights suddenly decided to overturn state actions. Had the American population really cared about the election, rioting would have taken place in the streets. But they did not. Most people were just glad that it was all over so they could get back to their favorite television shows, video games, and eating meals in their ever larger SUV’s.

The Bush presidency was at best mediocre for the first eight months of 2001. The Democrats had captured control of the Senate (after one member defected from the Republican ranks) and was able to block many actions Bush wanted. Worst of all, the economy was turning sour. The stock market was sliding down, and with it the job approval ratings of the president.

Then everything changed on 9/11. Crisis allowed George W. to turn from the butt of late night tv jokes to leader in the war against terrorism. In a swell of patriotic pride and outrageous anger, the American people seemed ready to follow him almost anywhere. Even though the stock market took a nose-dive and has stayed down in the year after the disaster, few blamed the President. The war on terrorism may not have been good for the economy, but it was good for presidential popularity ratings. Possibly extending the war to Iraq continued to put the economy on the back burner, even though the budget surpluses of 2000 had disappeared in 2001 and had turned into large deficits in 2002. The stage seemed set for Republicans to hold onto the House in the 2002 elections and perhaps even retake the Senate, a very unusual scenario after a party wins the White House. That is exactly what happened. All Republicans ran as supports of the popular President in his battle against terrorism.

The lack of quick success in Iraq and economic stagnation gave the Democrats a chance in the 2004 election. Americans seemed to care about the outcome and both sides worked hard to get voters out. Voting turnout was at 61%, this highest it had been since the turbulent 1960s. The media running stories about the closeness of the election certainly helped turnout. But it was also the most bitter and perhaps the most negative campaign in modern history. Certainly we have had negative campaigning ever since the beginning, and we have had negative ads on tv for decades. But this time the negativity flowed over into the popular culture as never before—books, movies, really nasty websites, new outside groups that attacked the characters of both candidates spending hundreds of millions.

Here is what I wrote in 2004 as the election approached: As we approach the primaries for the 2004 election, the war against terrorism and its extension into Iraq have not gone so well. Despite President G.W. Bush’s announcement in May of 2003 that the mission had been accomplished, Americans continue to die and the monetary costs are going up with no end in sight. Comparisons are being made to Vietnam, not a good thing to hear if one is running for reelection. Moreover, the economy continued to sputter, though there were some signs that a recovery, including even jobs, was beginning to take place. Perhaps the timing of the recovery would be kinder to the second President Bush. If the stock market continues to go up and jobs do continue to go up, then perhaps the growing deficits will also begin to decline, and the only obstacle to re-election would be the war in Iraq.

The economy did start to pick up, as measured by new jobs in the last few months before the election. However, deficits kept going up and the stock market did not do well as oil prices hit record highs. The major wedge issue was gay marriage. A wedge issue splits the opposition, driving some of their supporters to your side. This issue helped Republicans get record numbers of religious conservatives to the polls, especially in Ohio that offset the rise in the youth vote that mostly went for Kerry. Kerry’s line of attack was that the president was incompetent in pursuing the war, and Bush’s main theme was that he had been strong and would continue to be strong in a consistent way. With no new terrorist attacks on the nation’s homeland, the image of consistent strength carried the day, by about three million votes. About fifty-nine million Americans were happy and about fifty-five were not. The other approximately seventy-six million who could have voted did not care enough.

Ok, here is what I wrote in 2005 looking forward to the 2006 election: How the next election goes depends on how well Bush can resolve the situation in Iraq. Polls following the election show that this is the number one priority for citizens. As of the fall of 2005 things are not going well for the Republicans. The war slogs on with over 2,000 American soldiers killed, the President and members of his own party are divided on stem cell research and on allowing torture of prisoners, and Bush stumbled badly on hurricane responses and on his effort to name a Supreme Court replacement for Sandra Day O’Conner. His job approval numbers were at a new low for his administration. Of course, there was still time to turn it around, but Republicans were becoming ever more nervous about the 2006 off-year election.

Of course, as we look back at the election of 2006, now long over, Republican did have a lot to worry about, and they got the worst of it, at least nationally, if not in South Carolina, which is the storm cellar for the Republican “red states.” About 60% of all voters, according to exit polls said that their number one issue in voting was the Iraq War, and they did not approve of how W. Bush has pursued that war. The result was that Democrats retook both chambers of Congress, reversing what took place for the Republicans in 1994.

That gets us to the 2008 election. Clearly Americans voted for change and gave a negative verdict on the last eight years of rule by the Bush administration and the Republican Party. Barack Obama, the first African American ever to be elected (and for that matter, the first President who was not of western European background), inherited a mess both here (an economic melt-down started by the burst of the housing boom) an abroad (two unresolved wars with no clear ends in sight that we could no longer afford). Voter turnout was up marginally, and for a change, voters, especially young voters, were excited.

This situation provided the new president the same opportunity that President Bush had after 9/11: the opportunity to bring renewal to America and create a major political realignment if he was successful. These opportunities come rarely, only when the nation faces a great crisis and looks to strong leadership for change, and may even be willing to sacrifice. But we must remember what Machiavelli warned, that nothing is more difficult than to bring about a new order. As we saw in the 2010 election, the really significant change that Obama did bring did not digest well to the Americans who voted in that off-year election. The Republicans took control of the House easily and nearly controlled the Senate. Obama was left in a similar position as Clinton after 1994, though Clinton was faced with Republican majorities in both houses.

Much evidence exists that a new American order is needed regardless of which party is on power. A few reforms will be insufficient to allow us to go back to the way we had been living. This is because we have been financing our consumption of luxuries with money borrowed on overpriced housing and cheap gasoline.

During the early 2000s we continued to swap higher paying industrial jobs for lower paying service jobs. The auto industry was on the verge of collapse along with the many financial firms that had lost their bet on ever increasing housing prices.

Wage inequities have continued to grow. Those in the 90th percentile of wages made 83% more than the average wage in 1973. In 1994 the difference was 115%. The average difference between the low end jobs and CEO salaries was once a factor of about 16 to 1. Today it is about 400 to 1. To put this another way, the average CEO makes as much or more in one day than the lowest paid worker in her or his company makes for the entire year. Conservative columnist Kevin Phillips was so troubled by these trends in income disparity that he concluded the nation was on the verge of a political upheaval not seen since the 1930s or the 1890s before that—a revolt of the lower classes!

More and more children are in poverty. What about the greatest welfare program in the nation—Social Security? The government has been borrowing the surplus in that program for decades. In a few years when baby boomers start to retire the bills will come due. That begins happening in about 2015. Either benefits must be cut or taxes must be raised—unless all of you have a lot of kids really fast and educate the dickens out of them so that they can make a lot of money. It is that simple.

Schools, which are seen as the key to economic success, are under fire from all sides. Education budgets, already tight, were being cut with the economic downturn in 2008-9. The average college student, if she or he could afford to go to school at all, was graduating with over $20,000 in debt. But tuition continued to go up as states cut funding to institutions of higher learning. A 2010 study by the Council on Competitiveness, a private foundation, concluded that we are slipping badly in education and areas that are closely related to education.

While we are still 6th in innovation-based competitiveness, our rate of progress in this key area is number 40.
In college completion we are number 16.
In broadband internet access we are number 22.
We are number 11 in percentage of high school grads compared to other industrialized nations.
We are number 27 in percentage of degrees in science and engineering compared to developed nations.
In k-12 math and science, we rank number 48 in quality!
And in mobile phones we are number 29. (All figures from "Rising Above the Gathering Storm Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5.")

Clearly the U.S. is no longer number 1 in some very key categories that have great implications for the future. If these trends continue, we can conclude that the American Century may well be quickly waning.

The “American Dream” of each generation being better off than the previous generation is in danger. Studies done in the early 2000s show less upward mobility in class status and income in America than in most European nations. Even in France, a nation that many Americans see as an old aristocratic nation, children have a better chance of moving up than in the America of the early 2000s.

Man-made climate change, while still denied by some who reject the near-consensus of scientists, poses another set of challenges. Even if the probability of the scientific community being right on this is only fifty percent, would we be wise to continue to burn carbon based fuels and hope that they are wrong? Consider the “minimax strategy” in approaching this dilemma—what is the rational thing to do? Of course, most of us will not be around to see the end of life as we know it? Would that be fair to our children? And even if the scientists are wrong, are we wise to continue to try and fuel our economy on resources controlled by nation-states that hate us?

In short, this review of elections and changing economic, social, and environmental conditions since the late 1980s strongly suggest that some significant sacrifices are needed. They suggest that government will be asking us to do some things we may not want to do. If our new leaders ask, will we be willing to sacrifice for future generations and for the national good rather than try to maintain our own individual short-term comfort? Is the kind of renewal that needs to be asked of us possible?

Famous author and now deceased Kurt Vonnagut recognized this in a humorous attack on modern society when he said that our pledge of allegiance no longer read “I pledge allegiance to ... ,” but instead “I believe I can lose 30 pounds in 30 days and not ever feel hungry" (speech at USC Aiken, September 23, 1997).

We have been able to see the negative power of artificially created consmption in our own daily lives and those of our children for the last several decades. In an article that looked at the children of the children who went to Woodstock in the "summer of love" of 1967, James Kunen lamented that "We failed. We ran out of answers. Now there is no politics, just the petty scuffling of narrow self-interests. There is no cause but our own happiness, which we search for in the marketplace...the example our children have grown up with." The young people he interviewed in the piece saw life as dull and uninteresting with little to rebel against--only consumption. “The counterculture has been absorbed by the culture," said one young man. ”There’s nothing to do but entertainment--make it or watch it. The 60's and whatever it stood for have mutated into something that's just another show" ("It Ain’t Us Babe." Time. September 1, 1997. P.67). Perhaps that is changing—I hope so.

If large centralized corporate consumerist capitalism is the problem, no reason exists why some other varieties of capitalism could not be more supportive of community values. After all, industrial nations have already modified the laissez faire capitalism of the 1800s to make it more acceptable. Why could not we modify capitalism further to address these current flaws?

B. Entrepreneurism and "Social Entrepreneurism"

One of the terms that had been hot in academia and in political discussions around the country is entrepreneurism. USCA is no exception. USCA has had a program with the help of a private grant that is designed to promote entrepreneurship, the Economic Enterprise Institute. The aim is to foster the creation and development of small businesses.

Why is entrepreneurism popular? What about it do we all seem to find so attractive? We can find clues in our own daily lives. We want more power and control over our own work lives. We are willing to give up some of the security of corporate benefits packages in order to do this. Starting our own businesses seems the best way to gain the control we want. All too often the entrepreneurism movement is explained in terms of simple financial benefits. No doubt the possibility of getting rich is a powerful motivation for some. Sadly, those who build companies to find freedom for themselves often then ask employees to make the same sacrifices in freedom that drove them to start the enterprise in the first place. Regardless, the movement has been around too long and is too popular to be explained by simple acquisitive tendencies. Long before entrepreneurism became a buzz word, factory workers dreamed of starting their own little businesses. They dreamed of that triumphant moment of telling the boss where to shove it. Comic strips like "Dilbert" are popular because they resonate with the daily feelings of millions of employees. A few years ago a study revealed that the stress of working in low status jobs in which you have little control increases the risk of heart disease (Robert Barr. "Your Job May Be Killing You." The State. July 25, 1997. B11.)

The task is more complicated than just doing it, as the Nike slogan tells us. You must have a clear and workable political strategy to get there.

The traditional solution of the liberal left is redistributing wealth. Certainly redistributing wealth would provide more opportunities for more individuals. But as many failed Democratic presidential candidates have proved, wealth redistribution is an impossible political program to sell in America. A thoughtless quip about “spreading the wealth around” in the last few weeks of the 2008 presidential election cost Barack Obama some votes. Redistributions that have taken place had to be disguised a something else (like old age security) and had to be careful not to violate the norms of individual competition (we should not expect the old to compete anymore). Liberal programs inevitably involve government administration, which touches on another basic American value—distrust of government to administer programs (even though government has done a pretty good job in many areas, like Social Security and Unemployment Compensation).

What seems left is the kind of thing we hear from the pulpit on Sunday morning. We are told to love our neighbors and to follow the golden rule. Many of us try, but reality usually overtakes our best efforts by late Monday morning.

Nevertheless, the preaching and exhortation is useful. Before change can take place, someone must perform the intellectual task of pointing out and defining problems. These intellectual tasks are a necessary precondition for change. But that preaching has been going on for a long time with seemingly little effect.

B. Possible directions

What are the intellectual foundations for realizing more positive community values which can lead to the kinds of sacrifice necessary to change the course of the nation? How can we survive and prosper in the new more highly competitive world without all (or at least many of us) feeling miserable in the process? (Going back to the readings you did on Machiavelli, this process would be called "renewal.")

1. Breaking down the public/private distinction

This distinction has been broken down for a long time anyhow. We have just pretended that it existed. We have a mixed economy with no such thing as a truly free market or truly free enterprise. And quite frankly, we wouldn't want all of our economy to be free OR private anyway. How many of you would want to go back to the "good old days" of the turn of the century when corporations had practically no limits of what they could do? If you think so, take a look at books like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

So when corporations scream that some government regulation or program is destroying the "free market," they are talking about something that only exists as a myth. They don't complain when government bails them out with loans or protects them from foreign competition. The real question is not whether to interfere with the market, but when and where to interfere with the market.