America's Upbeat Mood

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neoliberals, sees an optimism with a patriotic tint, and waits for something more. "They're not going out and joining the Peace Corps today," he says. "Are people willing to vote for national service? That's the real test. If they aren't, then it's all just talk. The warm glow of it all may just come from sitting in front of the tube with everyone else, watching the flag."

The glow will be wasted if it remains only that. There are enormous social tasks begging to be addressed. The country's bridges and highways are literally falling apart, while the infrastructures of many of the grimy older cities have sunk into profound disrepair. The urban underclass, people in or slipping toward a permanent netherworld of poverty and alienation, numbers in the millions. Penal policy for the most part remains a wholesale, unimaginative dead end: criminals are either jammed into prisons or allowed a free-and-easy probation. But the public seems to find serious discussions of social problems passé, even annoying.

American allies in Europe, already envious of the U.S. economic recovery, were put off by the nationalist excesses they watched live from Los Angeles. The happy-go-lucky glee has permitted Europeans to indulge in their stereotype of Americans as big, overenergetic rubes. Last month France's weekly Le Nouvel Observateur ran a cover story titled The American Explosion. "As far as chauvinism is concerned," wrote former Deputy Culture Minister Franchise Giroud, in one particularly biting article, "the Americans are gold-medal winners in every category." Yet Giroud is tolerant in person. Says she: "We've gone very far in our derision of traditional values, and now we're coming back to them. I don't think the phenomenon in the U.S. is dangerous. It's just that, as usual, it's more visible." More than one British newspaper has offered some sober, sympathetic advice against too much gloating. "The gap that divides [the Soviet Union and Western Europe] from the United States is beginning to grow," warned an editorial in the conservative and pro-American Sunday Telegraph, "with Uncle Sam starting to look like the odd man out: isolated by too much wealth and success... In its present justifiably ebullient state of mind, the United States tends to be equally impatient of criticism from friend or foe."

To Americans busy enjoying themselves, however, the cautions from every quarter tend to sound like a parent warning a rambunctious child not to have too much fun: "Be careful! Somebody's going to get hurt!" The caveats are valid enough, but they ought not to spoil this rare frolicsome mood. The U.S. feels reasonably content and secure, sure-footed and loose. People just might be gathering their strength to endure the country's next surge of social ferment, to cope with new and unimagined crises. Or they might simply be relaxing a little. "We may only be on a national fling," says Middlebury President Robison. "One can go on a fun outing, enjoy it, be refreshed by it, without its having any earthshaking meaning. That's not necessarily all that bad. It is like a summer romance." If the romance deepens, so much the better.

—By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Joelle Attinger/ Boston, William Blaylock/Los Angeles and