When was the golden age of the United States? Most Americans would answer this question with a nostalgic story of their childhood when “prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.”
When Baz Luhrmann sang those words in “Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen,” he was saying that as people age they believe that their generation is better than those after it, but it applies to this topic as well.
When Americans think of better days, they think of the past, not the future. That statement is backed up by two recent Rasmussen Report’s telephone surveys showing that only 34 percent of Americans believe that our country’s best days are in the future, with an astonishing 46 percent saying that our glory days are a thing of the past.
Worse yet, only 17 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. is heading in the right direction, as opposed to 75 percent that say we are on the wrong track. These polls are depressing, to say the least, and reflect the overall mood of the country: we are in decline.
The reason for this negative thinking could be attributed to many reasons, such as a failing economy with another recession likely to happen, Wall Street fat cats scamming hardworking people out of their money, bickering politicians who cannot agree on what day of the week it is, or a president who is constantly showing indecisiveness toward nearly every subject he is asked about. Take your pick.
With all these negatives bogging down our country, it starts to sound pretty reasonable to jump on the decline bandwagon. But just before you do, consider the opinion of NIC American government instructor Richard Tanksley.
“I think that when people look economically at the time of growth that we had in the past and they look toward the future they don’t really see what the growth engine is going to be, so if we stay an innovative nation and we have entrepreneurs that step forward and bring new things and new products to market and more jobs into this country, even if they are service jobs, then we’d certainly have some good days in the future,” he said.
In order for Tanksley’s ideas to come to fruition and confidence to rise, proper leadership is going to have to get it going, and the status quo in Washington D.C. is not going to cut it. We need politicians who will work to favor the people, not the will of their party; the president himself has been caught doing this consistently.
Tanksley agrees.
“If someone can successfully lead us through this kind of minefield time that we are in, then yes, we can have better days ahead,” Tanksley said. “But on the other hand, if we continue to throw good money after bad causes it could be a while for us to get out of this.”
With this administration, it does not look like poor investments will end any time soon.
So, do America’s glory days rest in the past or are they yet to come? It’s hard to predict, but looking at current trends, the answer is the past. But great leaders rise out of the ashes of the poor ones, and out of the darkness must come the light.
If America’s glory days are ahead, it’s going to take a strong leader to do it. As the old saying goes, “To get a Ronald Reagan, you had to have a Jimmy Carter first.”
