Last week, Gov. Mitch Daniels rebutted our President’s State of the Union address. “When President (Barack) Obama claims that the state of our union is anything but grave, he must know in his heart that this is not true,” Daniels said.
I take issue with two parts of this statement.
The first is the use of the phrase “he must know in his heart.” Mitch sounds like a Care Bear. It’s akin something like, “Deep down, in his heart of hearts, President Obama knows that the evil Wizard Gargamel is winning the battle for FernGully.”
Secondly, is the state of our union really “grave?” Is 2012 really the “last” year we have to restore America, as Daniels later claimed?
I’m not an American exceptionalist. I understand that Republicans necessarily have to paint a less-than-rosy picture to take back the White House.
But must we be so apocalyptic?
It’s not only the GOP (Gloomy Old Pessimists) that paint an America on the decline. No, we’re a nation of depressed Van Goghs in that regard. Sixty-two percent of Americans polled last October said they thought the United States was trending downward.
Au contraire, America!
Last year, David Von Drehle wrote a fantastic article in Time magazine in which he pointed out Americans have always worried too much.
John F. Kennedy, when debating Richard Nixon, said, “The United States no longer carries the same image of a vital society” with its brightest days ahead. Gov. Mitch Daniels, 52 years later: Today’s youth are “the first generation in memory to face a future less promising than their parents did.”
Short memory, huh?
In reality, America’s doing fairly well across the board. Von Drehle notes that we too often interpret other countries’ gains as our losses.
Those gains, he notes, are due to “the triumph of the American way.” The Occupy movement has worthwhile goals of representing the non-rich. But they overblow our problems.
The poor in America are in fantastically good shape today compared to 100 years ago. Seventy percent of those below the poverty line have cars, and almost everyone has a refrigerator.
One-hundred years ago, the benefits of preserved food were limited to the fabulously wealthy.
One-hundred years ago, the poor were expendable labor; today there are a variety of laws to protect them.
There is progress to be made, but to make that progress, we have to accurately describe the problem.
An upcoming book, “The World America Made,” details that “the United States remains the world’s dominant power by virtually every benchmark, with a resilience that has belied earlier predictions of decline.”
The author is one Robert Kagan, advisor to one Mitt Romney, who recently said that an Obama America was a path to decline.
Awkward.
“Anyone who tells you that America is in decline,” Obama said last week, “doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”
Deep down, in your heart of hearts, you know he’s right.
— shlumorg@indiana.edu
