Feeling Proud Again

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If the mood sometimes had its shadowed side, a touch of self-righteousness and meanness, a hint of the old nativist punitive zeal, it also showed great shine. America made a pageant of itself, erupting in a procession of spectacles of sudden self-celebration, all red, white and blue: the political conventions a turbulent sea of Old Glories, the campaign (the Reagan campaign, anyway) a triumphal masterpiece of the politics of mood. Walter Mondale ran a depressive, cautionary race, preaching selflessness and self-denial, his speeches like the parable of the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf (the savage, devouring deficit). But the American public was not in the mood and buried him under a landslide. It was perfectly fitting that the roadside scene was turned into a television commercial--calling up patriotic spirits in the process of selling some beer. The new American mood was, if anything, eminently commercial. Whether one described it as enlightened self-interest or shrewd crassness, the old American talent for making a buck was alive and well. And after a hard passage through the deepest recession since the '30s, Americans were not cavalier about the gift.

The new patriotism and commercial energy of the nation conjoined in July and August during an extraordinary event: the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. There was a kind of magic about the Games, a brilliance of performance and setting, as if not only the athletes but the place itself and the weather, blue and golden, all rose to the occasion. Sometimes the crowds were gloatingly pro-American as the nation's athletes collected an overachieving 83 gold medals. There was a certain smugly triumphal mood in the stands that replicated the atmosphere of a Reagan campaign rally. At both events, young Americans broke into an overbearing victory chant: "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" But the Games also frequently achieved something close to perfection: athletes utterly inhabiting the instant of the act--driving chariots of fire.

SOVIETS AND SMOG

The Games had an even more remarkable dimension: they worked, and worked almost flawlessly. That is not the way they were supposed to go. The Soviets and more than a dozen Communist countries stayed away, suggesting that the Games would end in terrorism and ruin. Some said that the Los Angeles smog would choke the runners, that the extra traffic would bring the freeways to a fuming standstill, that the Soviet boycott would turn the Games into a * financial disaster and render them athletically meaningless. But nothing of the kind occurred.

The Los Angeles Olympics became a spectacular dramatization of a renascent American entrepreneurial energy and optimism. The driving force behind them was Peter Victor Ueberroth. For his supreme skill in making the Games work, and work brilliantly, Ueberroth is TIME's Man of the Year.