WASHINGTON AND THE CURSE OF THE PUNDIT CLASS

Eric Alterman

The American Century, so named in 1941 by Henry Luce of the Time media empire, lasted a scant 30 years. Like so many unofficial centuries, it began and ended with war. World War II ushered in the American Cen- tury by devastating the economies of all other major powers in the world. The Vietnam War helped end it by destroying the moral, political, and economic capital the United States had built up in the years preceding it. When President Richard M. Nixon announced on August 15, 1971, to the shock of friends and enemies alike, that the U.S. dollar would no longer be convertible into gold and that the postwar economic system that the United States had underwritten was no longer viable, he marked an abrupt end to the "century" of perceived American omnipotence in world affairs.

The succession of shocks that followed -- Watergate, the airlift from the Saigon embassy, the stagflation of the late 1970 s, the Teheran hostage affair, the reheated Cold War of the 1980 s, American political and military set- backs in the Middle East and Central America, the Iran -contra affair, and the current trade and budgetary crises -- are all symptoms and symbols of the inability of the American people and their elected leaders to come to terms with the end of the American Century. Newsweek magazine, jealous perhaps of its competitor's success in naming the previous polit- ical century, recently anointed the coming era "The Pacific Century." But it hedged its bets by proclaiming the United States to be a significant Pacific power. In other words, it's still our century; it's just not ours alone anymore.

In late 1985, the United States passed from the status of a creditor nation, which it had enjoyed since 1914, to that of a net debtor. Today that debt is the world's largest and still growing. It is expected to reach $650 billion,

or 18 percent of U.S. gross national product (GNP), by 1990. Our trade balance, positive as recently as 1980, ran at a negative $161 billion in 1987. At the dawn of the American Century we produced 40 percent of the world's GNP. Today we account for barely 20 percent. While beginning to acknowledge our declining economic position, our politicians, supported by most of the media and the bulk of the expert and policy-making com­ munity, still speak of the American mission in much the same terms as they did in 1945. The consequence is likely to be the same as it would be for General Motors if it were still rolling 1945 Cadillacs off its assembly lines: bankruptcy.

Seventeen years after the Nixon shock and 13 years after our defeat in Vietnam, Americans remain uncertain about the nature of their country's mission in the world, and public attention and discussion remain fixated on the buzzwords and symbols of power and prestige of 1945. At the heart of the American global mission is the relentless worldwide battle the United States has fought since 1945 to contain the influence of the Soviet Union. It is a war fought over largely symbolic territory, often with intangible value, but it has cost the country trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of lives, and many of its most important constitutional principles and legal standards.

An extraterrestrial visitor who landed in Washington in 1945 and returned 43 years later would find little significant difference in either the tone or substance of political discourse. Rather, he would hear the Reagan administration, which has presided over one of the most fantastic declines of a great power in world history, profess to take credit for restoring American "pride" in itself while ignoring the ruinous legacy it has bequeathed its successors. He would hear furious arguments over issues that bear no relevance to the future security and prosperity of the nation, but almost no mention of those threats that truly threaten its solvency and security. He would see a class of politicians, policymakers, political pundits, and press people who, despite a growing uneasiness about the nation's future in the American body politic, collaborated in the construc­tion of a nostalgic national façde. So long as we ...