The great unraveling: chronicling America's not-quite-decline.

• Author: O'Donnell, Michael
• Position: The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer - Book review

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

by George Packer

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 448 pp.

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Do not utter the words "American decline" to your conservative friends. Never mind the arguments for or against: to some on the right the mere topic is a kind of blasphemy, at once impious and infuriating. America can never falter, say its most reflexive champions. It's America. It is not merely one of 200-odd nations constrained by geographical boundaries, political economies, culture, history, and the swinging pendulum of fortune. America is both an idea and a promise, making it no ordinary country. Its citizens work harder than other people; its soil is richer than in foreign fields. America is the promised land, Americans are the chosen few, and victory, to paraphrase Mitt Romney, is their unique destiny.

The people who believe this superstitious nonsense are usually the ones cutting school funding and refusing to fix the roads. As the United States slips down the global competitiveness and education indexes and as income inequality rises, they insist that the country is great while refusing to pay for the things that make it so. Ironically, this very faith in American infallibility enables some of our most destructive public acts. Since America is exceptional, Republicans reason, why not use the threat to default on its financial obligations as a bargaining chip in budget negotiations? Defaulting would probably trigger a global financial disaster, but the far right seems to believe this would not happen, or that if it did, it would wash away our profligate sins. Yet in the heat of the debt ceiling farce of 2011, Standard & Poor's, by downgrading the U.S. credit rating, served notice that moist sentiments like destiny do not trump cause and effect. A recent survey on American competitiveness in the Economist archly noted, "This is the America that China's leaders laugh at."

On the other hand, acknowledging that the United States is not immune to decline is not the same as saying it is in decline. Americans are living longer than they have ever done. Their universities (if not their primary and secondary schools) are the envy of the world, dominating the annual global rankings. Despite the dysfunction in Washington, America's political infrastructure is broadly sound, featuring an independent judiciary, a free press, and reliably peaceful transitions of power every four years. The U.S. enjoys unrivaled military...