The Decline and Fall of Presidential America

It’s not a happenstance or some sad mistake that, barring a surprise, Americans will go to the polls in November to vote for one of two distinctly ancient men, now 77 and 81, both of whom have clearly exhibited language and thought problems for a significant period of time. To put this in perspective, remember for a moment that, until Ronald Reagan entered his second term in office in 1985 (during which he would get dementia before leaving the White House at age 77), the oldest president was Dwight D. Eisenhower and he was 70 (yes, 70!) not on entering the Oval Office but on leaving it after his second term in 1961.

Of course, that was another America in another age — and my apologies for using that word in a piece about Donald Trump and Joe Biden! It was one in which it seemed all too natural to have the youngest president ever, John F. Kennedy, who was only 46 years old when he was assassinated.

That happened in 1963, or relatively early in what was already known as “the American Century.” In fact, that phrase was first used in February 1941, before Joe Biden, Donald Trump, or the author of this piece even landed on Planet Earth. It was the title of an editorial in Life magazine by its owner Henry Luce. “The 20th century is the American Century,” he wrote. With a distinctly imperial image of an all-American future in mind, Luce was urging the country’s dramatic entry onto “the world scene” and, in defense of Great Britain, into what became World War II. He was also convinced that the twentieth century would indeed be “America’s first century as a dominant power in the world.”

In fact, he predicted that, if his country ditched its isolationist stance and made itself a true force by taking control of world affairs, the twentieth century would prove a distinctly all-American one. And as it happened, he wasn’t wrong. After the Nazis were defeated and the U.S. dropped those two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending World War II, the post-war years, the ones in which Joe, Donald, and I grew up, would become the earliest in… no doubt about it!… the American Century.

Alone and All-Powerful on Planet Earth

It’s true, of course, that when it came to major powers, despite its dominant position, the United States wasn’t then alone on planet Earth. Hence, the global struggle that came to be known as the Cold War, which all too often edged in a far hotter direction with the Soviet Union (and its ally Communist China, whose troops the U.S. actively fought in the Korean War in the early 1950s). It was also true that, by the late 1950s, when Joe, Donald, and I were “ducking and covering” under our desks in school, either this country or the Soviet Union could have ended everything with their ever-expanding nuclear arsenals.

Still, in so many ways, the years from 1945 to the moment the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 were indeed all-American ones and generally felt that way in this country.  Yes, Washington ruled the roost from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO). Admittedly, it also had its problems. Despite (as is still true today) pouring far more money into its military than any other country on the planet, from Korea to Vietnam, it proved incapable of winning a major war in Asia. Still, in so many ways, it was indeed a, if not the, globally dominant power. Kids like me or Joe or Donald growing up in such a world did sense that, to use a phrase I once made part of the title of a book of mine, we were distinctly living in a “victory culture.” And you can still sense some version of American triumphalism embedded in both of those now ancient creatures, Joe and The Donald.

After the Soviet Union disintegrated, of course, all of that seemed beyond self-evident and Henry Luce a prophet of the first order.  At that moment, in terms of great powers, this country was alone and evidently all-powerful on Planet Earth. It was, in fact, a time when American officials liked to refer to the United States as the “last,” “lone,” or even “ultimate superpower.” By then, Joe Biden, almost 49 years old, had already been a senator in Washington, D.C., for 18 years and Donald Trump, 45, was the “successful” president of Trump Management (the business his father had started for which he became “the apprentice”) and, while often losing millions of dollars, he was also the owner of the Plaza Hotel in New York City, the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and various troubled casinos in Atlantic City.

In 1991, it certainly seemed as if everyone on the planet (Joe and Donald included), whether they cared to or not, had entered nothing less than — yes! — the American Century in a staggeringly impressive fashion. And given the lack of other great powers — China had yet to begin its “rise” — the phrase “the last superpower” hardly seemed an exaggeration or even braggadocio in an American Century that was then a mere 50 years old and (so to speak) in the prime of life.  It was certainly a moment when power brokers in Washington believed that the world had been left lock, stock, and barrel to us, a mood that naturally infected both the still relatively youthful Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Misspeaking the American Century

Today, 83 years after that century began, I hardly need suggest that, whatever this planet may be, it’s anything but an all-American one. You might even think that, in old age, the American Century has become the perfect symbolic place for those two ancient men to face off one last time. In fact, it would be hard to get a more striking sense of just how deeply the American Century has aged than by watching those elderly men, born with that century, once again running for president in an American world that distinctly seems on the downhill slope.

That’s why, in some sense, I would consider neither of them a mistake. In their own unnerving and strangely spoken fashion, they both capture an image of an America heading for some national version of senility and, possibly, if Donald Trump wins election 2024, the all-too-literal end of this country’s democracy. If Joe Biden does capture the presidency once again, we’re still likely to find ourselves in a distinctly bump-stocked world in which all too many Americans might disagree in a devastating fashion about who should be considered president.

I mean, when you think about the American Century now, just imagine two candidates, one of whom can stumble on a radio show (where his backers provided the interviewer with all the questions) and briefly claim that he was “the first Black woman to serve with a Black president,” while the other can insist that Joe Biden’s reelection could lead us into… yes!… “World War II,” while repeatedly calling him “Obama”!

A Deeply Bump-Stocked Defeat Culture

No, I didn’t watch a single show from the 14 seasons of The Apprentice, though I did wander past Trump Tower from time to time. But believe me, in all those years before 2015, I never imagined that someday I might face a world in which Donald Trump (so unlike any politician who’s occupied a position of ultimate authority in this country) could ever hold power beyond compare, the power, in fact, to potentially make 2024 the last real American election. He could indeed provide the final exclamation point on the all-American world I’ve known all these years, whether he wins the presidency or not.  Of course, you can’t just blame The Donald for that.  He was only there (and remains here) because this country was sinking fast.

Today, there can be little question that, whichever old man takes election 2024, we’re watching a great imperial power going down, down, down on a planet that itself may be going down, down, down. And at my age, which falls just between Trump’s and Biden’s, it seems as if I’ve watched it all from the moment of my birth in July 1944.

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, my father, at age 35, volunteered for the U.S. Air Force and experienced that birthing American Century in person in Burma (where he fought the Japanese), while my mother, a theatrical and political caricaturist, spent many of her wartime nights at New York City’s Stage Door Canteen drawing servicemen like her husband heading off to a war that would indeed lay the groundwork for the American Century. And I’ve continued to watch that century develop all these years, often writing about it as well. And yet, somehow, nothing truly prepared me for this moment of ours.

Of course, growing up in the 1950s, I didn’t think of the United States as an imperial power.  It was my country, a democracy that (or so I thought once upon a time) generally did good in this difficult world of ours.  And now, whatever you may think of it, it seems to be preparing to go down big time in an ever less all-American world — and even faster if Donald Trump takes the reins of a presidency only recently made potentially far more autocratic by his very own Supreme Court.  (Talk about taking down the American Century!)

Today, it’s hard to imagine that a world ever existed in which this country was the unquestioned “lone superpower.” That now seems like such ancient history, as does the all-American world in which Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and I grew up — a world that, for young people today, would be hard even to imagine.

Imagine this, though: in a mere 30-plus years, we’ve moved from a planet with that triumphant “lone superpower” to one in which it’s becoming ever harder to conceive of a super anything. Instead, this country seems in the process of transforming itself into a heavily over-armed, deeply bump-stocked, wildly divisive culture on a planet that’s threatening to go down in a welter of wars, as well as unprecedented droughts, fires, floods, storms, and heat.

And if the ancient Donald Trump, who was recently almost knocked off by a man on a rooftop in Butler, Pennsylvania, with an AR-15 rifle, is indeed reelected in November 2024, we would undoubtedly also find ourselves in an almost unimaginable version of — yes! — defeat culture. (Maybe that will have to be the title of the book I’ll undoubtedly never write in the wake of turning 80 and heading distinctly downhill myself.)

So, here we are in 2024 with two seemingly confused old men contesting to “lead” the United States into what still passes for the future.  Nothing strange, right?  Not anymore. But all too sad, that’s for sure, given a future in which so many of us are likely to have to “duck and cover” in relation to so much.

The American Century has been declared over and done with more than once. Still, what might that imperial powerhouse Henry Luce — I grew up with his magazine, LIFE, offering me its vision of an all-American century from the baseball diamond to Hollywood to Washington, D.C., to a planet in this country’s sight lines — have thought about election 2024? What would he have made of those two bumbling old men “running” (a word that, under the circumstances, needs to be put in quotation marks) for president? I suspect his dream of the United States bringing “the triumphal purpose of freedom” to this planet — “It is in this spirit that all of us are called, each to his own measure of capacity, and each in the widest horizon of his vision, to create the first great American Century” — would now seem to him dated beyond words (as dated as those two old men, in fact).

Welcome, then, to the ancient American Century hobbling along at age 83.

This piece first appeared in TomDispatch.

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