Does our country’s “battered image and standing overseas”, along with being bogged down in an expensive ground war, the economy in a tailspin, plus the prospect of even more massive future spending on the assimilation of illegal immigrants, socialized healthcare, social security, in addition to stiff competition in the “global economy”, really mean the magic is over?
With the exception of the size of the illegal immigration problem, everything you have listed would have been an accurate list of the problems facing us immediately after the Vietnam War in 1975:
-battered international standing...check
-massive future spending obligations...check
-stiff economic competition (Japanese automobile imports, Arab oil embargo)...check
We addressed all of these problems within about seven years (by about 1982) and then began the longest period of economic expansion in history.
With another supply sider - tax cutter in the Oval Office like Ronald Reagan we can repeat the previous 25 year expansion again.
With a hard-left socialist such as Obama as President, I'm not so sure. He could do permanent damage to our economy by creating massive new entitlement programs such as a national health care plan.
Either Obama or McCain could do permanent damage by adopting economically debilitating measures such as the "cap and trade" carbon emissions reduction scheme.
In any event, the doom and gloom rhetoric about the future of the USA is very inaccurate. These times in the USA are very good by any objective standard. Our best days are still ahead. We have a very bright future.
Some things to consider:
How many people from around the world will try to immigrate to the USA this year?
How many other nations have the technical know how to conduct a manned space program with the sophistication of our shuttle program?
Solving supposedly intractable problems like Social Security are relatively simple. Just increasing the retirement age to 67-68 years of age will render the "trust fund" solvent through the "Boomer Bulge."
The “energy crises” today is an artificial one, easily solved by tapping into America’s vast reserves of coal, natural gas, oil shale, offshore oil, nuclear energy know-how, and etc.