America's Upbeat Mood

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Though that latent urge never died, it grew robust only at the convergence of several trends and events. One crucial prerequisite: the country at last seems to be contemplating and unsnarling the residual complexities of the Viet Nam War. In Washington, the earth-and-black-granite monument to those who died in the war, which is not quite two years old, draws 12,000 visitors a day. Viet Nam Veteran Jack Wheeler, 39, a driving force behind it, is pleased. "More of the visitors are people my age who didn't go," says Wheeler, author of Touched with Fire: The Future of the Viet Nam Generation. "And there are a lot of women. What that signals is a desire to think about Country with a capital C. It shows a willingness to remember."

The high-strung baby boomers have mostly passed 30 and are trotting toward 40: they have chosen careers, settled down, married, stabilized. Families and mortgages act as ballast. Furthermore, such a fresh, burgeoning stake in the future naturally fosters hope for the future. In political terms, a concern for the next century can turn right or left, toward economic conservatism, for instance, or toward a special determination to avoid nuclear war. Or up, into sheer ambition. Says Yippie turned Yuppie Jerry Rubin: "People are very patriotic. I'm much more pro-American than I have ever been in my life. It's not that people are optimistic about foreign policy or Government, but about their own power and achievement."

Silicon Valley is the Yuppie stronghold, and the computer boom has contributed significantly to the renewed faith in American ingenuity and, more broadly, in the American dream of boundless opportunity. The country's economic future, when viewed through a silvery high-tech scrim, does indeed look exciting. Moreover, the 21st century seems to be mingling with the 19th: entrepreneurism, led by the high-tech vanguard, has been imbued with a quasipatriotic urgency.

Indeed, the economic recovery, more than any other factor, accounts for America's soaring spirits. True, the federal deficit is huge and worrisome. But since the spring of 1983, the G.N.P. has been expanding faster than it did in the previous ten years, and the inflation rate, 4.2%, is down to the comfortable levels often or 15 years ago. Since the recession bottomed out in November 1982, disposable income has risen by $1,500 a person and nearly 7 million new jobs have opened up. (By contrast, Western Europe, which has a comparable working-age population, lost 3 million jobs in the past decade.) "To be honest with you, everything depends on the economy," says Mo Ansari, part owner of Mr. Mike's Breakfast Restaurant in Keego Harbor. "They like to work," he says, gesturing toward his patrons, "and there's a big smile on their face when they do. I'm happy to see it, because I don't like being around depressed people." Four years ago, Ansari came to Keego Harbor from Iran. The rollicking economy has made the U.S. more attractive than ever as a destination for immigrants: 2.5 million have come legally over the past five years, 20% more than arrived during the previous five years. It ought to hearten Americans that so many people around the world still hunger avidly to become Americans.

The U.S. has moved beyond the sense of powerlessness instilled by the Viet Nam debacle and