On America and greatness

Isn't America great?

Or maybe it's not so great, but it could be great, depending on who we elect president in November 2016.

The greatness debate bubbled to the surface after real estate developer Donald Trump made it his campaign slogan: "Make America Great Again."

It's by no means new: Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush ran in 1980 on the slogan "Let's make America great again." It's been used variously in political discourse by Republicans and Democrats. Conservative writer Dinesh D'Souza wrote a book titled "What's So Great About America?" Former President Bill Clinton reassured us of American greatness by reminding us that "there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."

Part of the Trump appeal is rooted in the fact that Americans like to be told they live in a great country. There are enough daily reminders that things are not so great — homeless people sleeping under bridges, black protesters demanding action to address police abuses, a persistently high real unemployment rate — that we'd rather our would-be leaders not dwell on the negative.

The Reagan/Trump slogan necessarily presumes two things, however: One, that America was once great, but at some point in the past (usually coinciding with the election of the most recent Democratic administration) greatness was lost. And only by electing (fill in the blank) can greatness be restored.

That's why former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley — in his Las Vegas press availablity last week — disagreed with Trump. "Our country's already great," O'Malley said, attacking Trump's immigration plan. "The symbol of our country is the Statue of Liberty, not barbed wire, not a chain-link fence."

O'Malley wants to halt deportations of immigrants by executive order until Congress works out a comprehensive immigration reform plan that allows most of the estimated 11 million people who came to America illegally to stay.

Asked about how he'd accomplish that plan when a Republican-controlled House refuses to bring up even GOP-authored immigration bills, O'Malley made his own appeal to American greatness: Republicans won't be around forever, he said. And nobody under 30 wants to bash immigrants.

Would-be presidents generally avoid saying America is not so great, the way fictional TV anchor Will McAvoy from the late and unlamented HBO series "The Newsroom" did in that show's premiere. (It's a popular clip on YouTube still.) Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gently hints at that possibility when she calls to mind "the basic bargain of America," that success flows from hard work and rule-following. How, then, to explain that some of the most successful people broke all the rules when they crashed the economy by creating and selling awful investments and suffered no consequences? For them, America truly is a great country.

That's why the anti-Trump, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, is also drawing attention: He's not afraid to bring full-throated attention to signs of America's present lack of greatness. Forty-five million people in poverty. Wealth aggregating to the top 1/10th of the top 1 percent, which owns more of it than the bottom 90 percent. No guarantees of jobs, a decent wage or health care. Social Security under attack. And behind it all, a cabal of billionaires who buy elections and rig lawmaking to perpetuate their hegemony. Sanders asks: Is that what America's supposed to be?

But even in that, there's a presumption that a better, greater America exists, even if in the abstract. A greatness that can be brought into existence based on the success of a political revolution Sanders is doing his best to foment. An America run by and for the vast majority of regular people, with rules that apply fairly to all. That sounds pretty great.

--Steve Sebelius is a Las Vegas Review-Journal political columnist. He'll be on vacation this week. His column returns Sept. 2.