Twilight of the American Century

by Andrew J Bacevich

  Sixth, enact tax policies that will promote greater income equality.

  Seventh, increase public funding for public higher education, thereby ensuring that college remains an option for those who are not well-to-do.

  Eighth, beyond mere “job” creation, attend to the growing challenges of providing meaningful work—employment that is both rewarding and reasonably remunerative—for those without advanced STEM degrees.

  Ninth, end the thumb-twiddling on climate change and start treating it as the first-order national security priority that it is.

  Tenth, absent evident progress on the above, create a new party system, breaking the current duopoly in which Republicans and Democrats tacitly collaborate to dictate the policy agenda and restrict the range of policy options deemed permissible.

  These are not particularly original proposals and I do not offer them as a panacea. They may, however, represent preliminary steps toward devising some new paradigm to replace a post–Cold War consensus that, in promoting transnational corporate greed, mistaking libertinism for liberty, and embracing militarized neo-imperialism as the essence of statecraft, has paved the way for the presidency of Donald Trump.

  We can and must do better. But doing so will require that we come up with better and truer ideas to serve as a foundation for American politics.

  42

  Not the “Age of Trump”

  (2017)

  A sampling of recent headlines: “Art in the Age of Trump;” “Truth in the Age of Trump;” “Feminism in the Age of Trump;” “Hate in the Age of Trump;” “Reading Yeats in the Age of Trump;” “Anything At All Can Happen in the Age of Trump.” And that’s barely scratching the surface.

  Concerned about the impact of the “Age of Trump” on science? A wealth of recent literature examining that topic awaits you. Ditto for sex, gay rights, cities, philanthropy, bioethics, foreign policy, fashion, investing, anxiety, faithfulness, the Arctic, and even “vegan activism.” The list goes on. In the “Age of Trump,” everything is changing, and bigly.

  To judge by the avalanche of commentary exploring every aspect of his eponymous “Age,” our recently inaugurated president is to the United States what Caesar Augustus was to Rome or Louis XIV was to France. Just months in office, he is already putting a profound mark on virtually every aspect of human endeavor.

  So at least hordes of hyperventilating journalists, scholars, activists, bloggers, and opinionated citizens purport to believe. Mark me down as skeptical. My bet is that when future historians render a verdict on Donald Trump they will see him as our least consequential president since Benjamin Harrison, whose signature diplomatic achievement was to persuade Europeans to lift a ban on pork imported from the United States, or even since William Henry Harrison, Benjamin Harrison’s grandfather, who died after a mere thirty-one days in office.

  Particularly on the home front, the prospect of Trump achieving anything of lasting significance is rapidly diminishing. Barring some domestic equivalent of Pearl Harbor, Trump’s own incompetence, compounded by the internal dysfunction besetting his administration, will severely limit his prospect of making much of an impact. Throw in extreme partisanship, relentless sniping from the establishment press, and the obstructions posed by courts and the permanent government, and you end up with a recipe that almost guarantees paralysis.

  That Trump will retain the ability to fire up his supporters and enrage his detractors will doubtless be the case. But for the balance of his term, fending off investigations and indictments is likely to absorb the preponderance of his attention. Whatever mischief he succeeds in committing, whether by cutting social programs or conferring favors on major corporations, can be overturned or reversed once he departs the scene. So unless Trump plunges the nation into some disastrous war—a possibility, alas, not to be discounted—Americans will end up mostly remembering their forty-fifth president, fondly or not, for his tweets.

  Yet to suggest that Trump will end up on the Harrison end of the presidential spectrum is not to imply that the United States as a whole will remain stuck in neutral as long as he occupies the White House. On the contrary, dramatic, fundamental, and probably irreversible changes are transforming American society day by day before our very eyes. It’s just that Trump himself is irrelevant to those changes, which predate his entry into politics and continue today all but unaffected by his ascent to the presidency.

  Melodramatic references to an “Age of Trump” that suddenly commenced in November 2016 obscure this reality. Simply put, our collective fixation on the person and foibles of Trump the individual causes us to overlook what is actually going on. And what is actually going on is something that Donald Trump hasn’t, won’t, and can’t affect.

  Let me illustrate the point by citing a pair of recent articles in the New York Times. Even as other “legacy” outlets become passé, that newspaper continues to serve as an important bellwether of change, cueing political and cultural elites to trends that merit their attention. Nominally, the Times provides its readers with “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” In practice, it prints “All the Views Deemed to Matter.” Among the things that matter most at the Times are changes in the prevailing definition of freedom.

  What we’re talking about is not my grandmother’s version of freedom, of course. In practice, the Times equates freedom with maximizing personal autonomy, a proposition especially applicable to all matters related to race, gender, sex, and sexuality. (When it comes to class, the Times is ambivalent, sympathizing with those in need while simultaneously celebrating extravagant consumption.) Choice signifies empowerment. That expanding individual choice ultimately advances the common good is taken as a given.

  So the operative principle is this: anything that enlarges choice is commendable. A recent Times story about the first women to complete army infantry training—“a towering milestone”—offers a vivid example. Young women “who dreamed of going into the infantry” now can have those dreams come true, the Times reports, and with that “are no longer barred from the core combat positions that are the clearest routes to senior leadership.” Whether the quality of US senior military leadership leaves something to be desired (it does) and whether gender imbalance at the top contributes to those deficiencies (who knows) are questions that the Times does not take up. What counts, and is to be applauded, is that nothing should impede women hankering to serve in combat from making it to the pinnacle of the military hierarchy.

  On the other hand, anything that inhibits choice calls for critical examination. The traditional prohibition on suicide offers an example. The front-page treatment given to a story on “medically assisted death,” published in the Times one day after the feature on female grunts, illustrates the point.

  This 7,000-plus word essay, spread across six pages and including photographs, provides a deeply sympathetic account of why and how John Shields chose to arrange for his own death. A former Catholic priest and lifelong spiritual seeker who had lived a full and consequential life, Mr. Shields was suffering from an incurable disease that condemned him to a wretchedly slow and painful demise. So he resolved to determine his own fate. In doing so, this exemplar of decency and virtue became something more: as depicted by the Times, in ending his life, Mr. Shields was expanding the very parameters of human freedom.

  “Having control over the terms of his death,” according to the Times, “made him feel empowered over the disease rather than crippled by it.” So after bidding farewell to loving family and friends, and with the help of an obliging physician (“I’m coming here and John will be dead, so I guess technically I’m killing John. But that’s not how I think of it.”), he did it his way, with impressive dignity.

  Add to the mix a recent New York Times Magazine cover story on non-exclusive coupling—“Is an Open Marriage a Happier Marriage?”—along with the attention the newspaper lavishes on all things LGBT and you get the picture. Whether for good or for ill, and whatever tomfoolery Donald Trump may or may not be plotting
, American society is undergoing a profound moral and cultural revolution, of which—irony of ironies—the narcissistic Trump is himself a product.

  My argument here is not that the Times itself is somehow responsible for this revolution. While it may encourage, approve, or certify, it does not cause. As the paper of record, the principal function of the Times is to bear witness. In that regard, it performs an essential service. But if the Times went out of business next week, the forces promoting a radically revised conception of freedom would persist, their momentum unchecked.

  So to expend energy exploring the implications of the so-called “Age of Trump” is to engage in a fool’s errand. Trump’s antics serve to obscure the real story. Indeed, in a fundamental sense, the Trump phenomenon represents the embodiment of “fake news.”

  The real story is this: ours is an “Age of Autonomy,” in which received norms—the basis of freedom as my grandmother understood the term—are losing their authority. This is notably the case with regard to norms that derive from religious tradition. How and whether the forces displacing those norms—science, the market, Big Data, social media—will foster a durable basis for a morally grounded community is at present impossible to foresee.

  Yet this much is for sure. Long after Trump has retired to Mar-a-Lago, the revolution that predates his rise to prominence will continue, with implications far outweighing anything he—or any other president—may do. Someday even the New York Times may notice.

  43

  The Failure of American Liberalism

  (2016)

  Does the election of Donald Trump qualify as a triumph of American conservatism? No, for the simple reason that Trump subscribes to few of the values that conservatives (and by extension the Republican Party) have for decades touted as core principles.

  So although the GOP will now control the presidency and both houses of Congress, gaining power has come at a high cost: the party faithful must now declare their fealty to a leader whose convictions, to the extent that any can be identified, are all over the map. In effect, Republicans must now pretend that incoherence and inconsistency are virtues. Rallying to Trump requires conservatives to engage in voluntary acts of self-debasement, all presumably contributing to the overarching goal of “draining the swamp.”

  Yet if Trump’s unexpected triumph is, therefore, rich with contradictions, Hillary Clinton’s defeat is precisely what it seems to be: a rejection not only of the Democratic Party but also of contemporary American liberalism.

  Democrats today may see themselves as heirs to a progressive tradition that traces its lineage back to Franklin Roosevelt, or even to Williams Jennings Bryan. But that does not describe the Democratic Party that elevated Hillary Clinton to the position of standard bearer. Mrs. Clinton bears no more resemblance to Bryan, the Great Commoner, than does Donald Trump to Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator.

  Once upon a time, progressivism meant standing up for the little guy against what another Roosevelt once called “the malefactors of great wealth.” Those days have long since passed. The version of progressivism represented by Clinton and her allies accommodates present-day malefactors. Rather than confronting class enemies, it glosses over competing class interests.

  True, on the far left, vestiges of an earlier and more radical progressivism persist. We saw it in the primary challenge mounted by Bernie Sanders. We hear it in the language of Elizabeth Warren. We can expect to hear more of that language in the days ahead.

  But in the party that chose Hillary Clinton as its nominee, radicalism qualifies as no more than a fringe phenomenon. While paying lip service to the idea of “toppling” the 1 percent, Clinton herself identifies with and assiduously courted members of the moneyed elite. They are her kind of people. In that regard, if ever a picture were worth a thousand words, it’s the photograph of both Clintons happily posing alongside Donald Trump at Trump’s third wedding. It shows a couple at ease with their surroundings, knowing that they are where they belong.

  Yet apart from an affinity for wealth, status, and celebrity, what is the essence of Clinton-style liberalism? As during her husband’s presidency, it centers on a theory of political economy. In a paid speech to Brazilian bankers prior to launching her run for the presidency, Hillary Clinton remarked, “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.”

  Critics jumped on this passage as proof that Clinton intended to permit hordes of undocumented immigrants to flood the United States. It is, instead, a concise summary of the worldview to which leading Democrats subscribe, albeit with this caveat: the scope of that dream is not hemispheric, but global. The Democratic establishment’s commitment to openness encompasses not only trade and borders, but also capital and ideas, all flowing without disruption. Raised a Methodist, Hillary Clinton has long since followed the mainstream of her party by putting her faith in globalization.

  To be sure, her belief in the transformative effects of globalization is unexceptional. On such matters, she merely parrots conventional wisdom. That removing barriers to technology-charged corporate capitalism will generate wealth on an unprecedented scale has long since become an article of faith everywhere from Washington to Wall Street to Silicon Valley. That given proper oversight these forces will also alleviate problems of inequality, injustice, and environmental degradation, while advancing the cause of world peace—all boats everywhere eventually rising—is liberalism’s addendum to globalization’s common creed.

  Since the end of the Cold War, the American political establishment has committed itself to validating such expectations. This has become the overarching theme of national politics, successive administrations, occasionally differing on specifics, all adhering to the so-called Washington Consensus. From the first Clinton to the second Bush and then on to Barack Obama, each in turn has used American power and influence to pry open the world so that people, goods, and capital can move ever more freely.

  Each administration in turn has ignored or downplayed evidence that openness is not a win-win proposition. Along with riches for some have come market crashes, painful recessions, joblessness for citizens hard-pressed to adapt to the rigors of a changing market, and resistance from those opposed to the cultural amalgamation that trails in globalization’s wake. Even so, proponents of this ideology remain undeterred.

  With its putative “logic” so deeply embedded in the fabric of American politics, globalization appeared—at least until November 8—immune to challenge. Submission to the dictates of a globalizing marketplace appeared all but obligatory, with alternatives such as socialism or distributism or any other -ism rendered inconceivable and therefore not worthy of serious consideration.

  Lost along the way were expectations that furthering the common good or promoting human virtue, not simply expanding the economic pie, might figure among the immediate aims of political economy. On the weekend before Election Day, Ross Douthat wrote in the New York Times that “technocratic and secular liberalism may simply not be satisfying to a fragmented, atomized society.” He got that right. Indeed, he might have gone further: the technocratic and secular liberalism embodied by Hillary Clinton has actually exacerbated the fragmentation and atomization of society, even if elites (until now) were slow to take notice.

  In the run-up to the 2016 election, observers without number described it as the most important in recent memory, if not in all of US history. In fact, however, a Hillary Clinton victory, assumed as all but automatic, would have drained the election of significance.

  Clinton’s supporters looked forward to the prospect of the first woman president as an achievement of cosmic importance. Of course, a half-century ago many attributed comparable significance to the election of our first Catholic president. Yet note that today John F.Kennedy’s religious affiliation figures as little more than a footnote to his presidency. So too,
I suspect, the novelty of having a woman in charge of the White House would have worn off within weeks. At that point, rather than the president’s gender, the been-there, done-that quality of her thinking would have attracted notice.

  In that respect, rather than a turning point, installing a second Clinton in the White House would have constituted a postponement of sorts, Americans kicking four years further down the road any recognition of just how bland and soulless their politics had become.

  Now that Trump has won, however, the pre-election hyperbole might actually prove justified. The United States finds itself suddenly adrift in uncharted waters. Once Trump takes office, the captain on the bridge will be unlicensed and unqualified. We may hope that he masters his responsibilities before running the ship aground. In the meantime, the rough seas ahead might provide an incentive for liberals and conservatives alike to give a fresh look to some of those ideological alternatives that we just might have discarded prematurely.

  44

  An Ode to Ike and Adlai

  (2016)

  My earliest recollection of national politics dates back exactly sixty years to the moment, in the summer of 1956, when I watched the political conventions in the company of that wondrous new addition to our family, television. My parents were supporting President Dwight D. Eisenhower for a second term and that was good enough for me. Even as a youngster, I sensed that Ike, the former supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe in World War II, was someone of real stature. In a troubled time, he exuded authority and self-confidence. By comparison, Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson came across as vaguely suspect. Next to the five-star incumbent, he seemed soft, even foppish, and therefore not up to the job. So at least it appeared to a nine-year-old living in Chicagoland.