The subtitle of this book says it all: "What Went Wrong with America - and How It Can Come Back".
Some books don't really need to be read. In the sense that, if someone explains to you what they say, then you've basically got it; it's not really vital actually to read the (in this case) 360 pages of text. This may indeed be a case in point, though I don't regret the effort. It's one of those books where the authors pile on example after example, anecdote after anecdote, argument after argument, to demonstrate what they said at the outset they were going to say.
It comes down to this (I quote):
"The end of the Cold War, in fact, ushered in a new era that poses four major challenges for America. These are: how to adapt tp globalization, how to adjust to the information technology (IT) revolution, how to cope with the large and soaring budget deficits stemming from the growing demands on government at every level, and how to manage a world of both rising energy consumption and rising climate threats."
The authors' contention, made eloquently and convincingly, is that the United States is currently failing on all counts, failing to address these challenges and thus inevitably gradually losing its primacy in the world, a fact that actually matters not only to Americans, but to the rest of the world too. They describe a contemporary America which lost the plot, went into denial about a whole series of inconvenient truths (including, but not limited to, Al Gore's famously capitalised version), and let its education and political systems in particular slide into disrepair and dysfunction.
The book is a tonic to those who, like me, wish America well, and would like to see it retain its primacy in the world, but who look on in disbelief the sheer irrationality of American public debate, where politicians can question the need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, baldly refute or disregard established scientific fact, rule out on principle any tax increase - ever - even as their monumental deficit threatens the country with ruination at worst and Chinese ownership at best, and obsess about tangential "values" issues, even as they sink further and further into the morass. A tonic not of course because of the grim picture it paints, but because it at least reveals that there is some-one in US public debate able to nail this absurd situation for what it is, and think in a rational way about what it might take to put it right.
If the situation sounds bleak, that is because it is bleak. Statistic after statistic, and ruthlessly open-eyed analysis demonstrate that the things which assured America its primacy - a unifying sense of national purpose, a world class education system, enlightened public investment in research, technology and infrastructure, a political class prepared to face the real, pressing issues of the day on the basis of rational policy-making - have all fallen into abeyance.
Politically speaking, the authors share the blame equally between the two big parties, albeit recognising that the extreme partisanship of contemporary US politics is a consequence of real changes in society. Democrats, hooked on untouchable entitlement programmes, which will inevitably bankrupt the country if not cut back, and Republicans, in denial about the need to raise taxes to deal with the deficit (dammit, guys, Reagan raised taxes!) and unwilling to address the twin issues of energy and climate change, neither party able to engage in rational discussion with the other, are jointly condemning the nation to perdition.
So is it all downhill from here? No. Our authors, self-described "Fourth of July guys" reject the popular theory circulating the watercoolers of the nation that "the nineteenth century belonged to Britain, the twentieth to America and the twenty-first will belong to China." To quote again:
"Our problem is not China, and our solution is not China. Our problem is us - what we are doing and not doing, how our political system is functioning and not functioning, which values we are and are not living by. And our solution is us - the people, the society, and the government that we used to be, and can be again. That is why this book is meant as both a wake-up call and a pep talk - unstinting in its critique of where we are and unwavering in its optimism about what we can achieve if we act together".
Optimism is of course a great American value, and sometimes one feels the authors over-emphasise their optimism, pre-emptively defending themselves perhaps against the anticipated criticism that they are somehow "unpatriotic" - a fear which is itself quite revealing about the quality of public discourse they denounce elsewhere. But it's not just optimism, there are policy prescriptions in this book too, inevitably taking on the shibboleths of the political left and right: higher taxes, lower entitlements, investment in education, infrastructure and R&D, belt-tightening across the social classes, a taming of special interests (especially the fossil fuel lobby) and some much-needed "shock therapy" to the political system, possibly via a viable third party candidate à la Ross Perot, to help recapture the rational political middle ground which most voters occupy.
To this reader at least, the description of the cure was somehow less convincing than the unrelenting analysis of the problem, as it seemed to rely ultimately on a leap of faith, that when push comes to shove, the underlying spirit of the American people (still there and illustrated by myriad examples) will win through. But then this reader is not an American and maybe therefore lacks that very spirit which will see the US through its current troubles. Hopefully, my Old World pessimism will prove to be wrong.
Bleak analysis and faithful optimism. This is US.
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