Sluggish America can still be a world leader

A new survey shows that a majority of Europeans want the United States to continue exerting “strong leadership in world affairs.”

One wonders why Europe holds so much faith in America right now when Americans, trapped in a deep national malaise, have so little faith in themselves.

The survey, by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, asked Europeans in 12 countries their view of America’s role in the world, and 54 percent voiced support for continued American leadership ― a figure that has remained steady for the last few years.

That hasn’t always been so. During George W. Bush’s presidency, only about one-third of the Europeans surveyed appreciated American leadership ― not surprisingly, given Bush’s two failed wars.

The media today is glutted with politicians and prognosticators solemnly predicting America’s final decline. A friend of mine, a former U.S. diplomat, told me a few days ago that he feared the United States “may be marching to a British ‘East of Suez’ moment.” That phrase, referring to the somber withdrawal of British forces from Aden, Yemen, in 1967, has come to be shorthand for the fall of the British Empire.

Well, I have a more optimistic view. This undeniably dark moment strikes me as a toxic bubble, not a permanent state of affairs. Our economy, our politics, our state of mind all seem poisonous. In fact, it reminds me of 1979, when Americans also lay at low ebb.

Watergate, the military loss in Vietnam, the 1979 energy crisis ― the second in that decade ― and our impotence dealing with the hostage crisis in Iran led Americans to believe the period of America’s greatness had come to an inglorious end.

Like now, the economy was struggling, though for different reasons. The U.S. suffered hyperinflation ― 13.3 percent in 1979 ― with corresponding record-high interest rates, for savings and for debt. The unemployment rate was approaching 10 percent, and economists coined a new term to describe the sad state of affairs: stagflation. The U.S. fell into recession the next year.

One photograph seemed to distill the pervasive sense of humiliating national failure: the picture of crashed U.S. military aircraft on a beach in Iran ― Desert One, the failed effort in 1980 to rescue the 52 American hostages in Tehran.

But then the nation pulled out of that relatively quickly, showing that one thing Americans needed was a strong leader. Many people who lived through that period still angrily disparage Ronald Reagan’s policy choices, but no one can say he was not a strong, inspirational president. He had the ability to rally and vitalize Americans ― much more so than his stolid predecessor. And as it always does, the economy eventually recovered; by 1983 inflation had fallen to 3.8 percent, and gross domestic production was growing at a rate of about 7 percent. Americans regained faith in themselves and their nation.

This is not intended to be a paean to Reagan. I was White House correspondent for the New York Times when he was president, and Reagan also did considerable damage. His policies added more to the national debt than any president since Franklin Roosevelt, who had to pay for World War II ― or any modern president, for that matter, except George W. Bush. The national debt grew by 21 percent during Reagan’s term (and 28 percent under Bush).

As was true in 1979, the United States does not have a strong, inspirational leader today, and none of the Republican candidates appears to be any stronger. Hopefully President Obama or some Republican will prove me wrong. But for now, weak leadership has allowed a bullheaded ideological minority in Congress to paralyze the government by focusing all attention on its single-minded obsession: federal debt. Certainly it’s a problem, but look around the world and you will find dozens of nations ― 31 in all ― that have higher debt-to-GDP ratios.

Among them, of course, are Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland, the nations at the heart of the European debt crisis, but also Germany, Israel, Bahrain and Canada. U.S. debt is only slightly higher than the world average. Should debt stand as the end-all and be-all focus of government policy now, with so many people unemployed? Americans don’t appear to think so. In a Washington Post-ABC News survey last week, only 14 percent of Americans approved of the job Congress is doing. Sixty-two percent strongly disapproved.

Perhaps Americans should begin looking at themselves as Europeans do, as shown in that survey ― an admirable, indispensable nation, meant to lead the world.

By Joel Brinkley

Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times. ― Ed.

(Tribune Media Services)