Getting a nation's birthday gift ready

Next year is America's 250th -- but is there any will to celebrate it?

Apr 12, 2025

We’re far from the hoopla of the nation’s bicentennial, but that doesn’t mean we should give up hope. (Photo on Unsplash by Matt Busse)

Here’s a whopper of a word that you probably haven’t used lately, or maybe ever before: semiquincentennial. You might want to practice saying it aloud, because it’s how the U.S. government officially refers to our nation’s coming 250^th anniversary. You could also call it a bisesquicentennial, or a sestercentennial, English being a language of migrant terms — all Latin, in this case, though not of the sort now being deported by our government.

But in deference to the fact that you don’t know who they’ll come for next, maybe we should just call it America’s Bigly Birthday, to fully respect the guy who is likely to be our president, still, in 2026.

Surely it’s not because of the word’s clumsiness that we don’t hear much about the semiquincentennial. Could it have anything to do with fading pride, or hope?

For those of us who were around for the nation’s bicentennial, the contrast is striking: 50 years ago we were already deep into a years-long celebration of the 200^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. By the spring of 1975, the American Bicentennial logo was ubiquitous — on license plates, coloring books, patriotic trinkets, government vehicles — and patriotic observances were being staged in communities all over the country.

It wasn’t an easy time. America was still absorbing the social upheaval of the 1960s, trying to recover from an unpopular war that divided us, coping with the shock of the nation’s only presidential resignation. Yet there was a sense that we had emerged from the recent turmoil with our values intact, and that the nation’s future would be better. We were eager to celebrate what we understood to be our glorious 200-year history.

These days it might be hard to find people who embrace such an optimistic view. Is the difference between then and now that we’ve developed a more honest understanding of our nation’s past? Grown more uncertain about its future? Absorbed more anger about what’s going on right now? Or are just too damn embarrassed about our government to want to wave a flag?

Maybe for all of those reasons, we’re clearly not gearing up to celebrate America as enthusiastically as we did a half-century ago. Many of us will find it hard to full-heartedly honor a country that is today governed by increasingly anti-democratic forces, that is squandering its role as a protector of freedom globally and a leader of nations with mainly honorable intentions. Could MAGA folks and progressives these days even get together long enough to plan a celebration of the nation’s founding?

Yet there are ways in which, surprisingly, we might be better positioned than we imagine to reaffirm the course that our nation’s founders imagined when they launched the American democratic experiment in 1776. Maybe we have more resilience than seems apparent at this moment — and maybe, then, there will be more than we expect to celebrate in 2026.

Oh, there’s a lot to complain about if you’re a thoughtful American, and plenty that deserves our attention more than wondering about how we mark one particular Independence Day. This week we witnessed the specter of a president capriciously plunging the entire world into economic uncertainty; ordering that the government’s power be brought to bear against more of the people and institutions that have offended him or that stand against his drive for unbridled power; and continuing to dismantle both the economic stability and the cultural framework that have for decades marked this civilized society. What Donald Trump and his enablers are doing is truly awful — it is weakening America, at home and abroad — and we need to devote our energy to fighting it. Yes, that’s certainly more important than worrying about how we mark an anniversary that’s 15 months away.

But partying isn’t what I’m talking about. If I indulge in a bit of reminiscence here, it could help illuminate both how we might begin to recover from this treacherous moment and where we may be in that recovery process when we celebrate America’s 250^th.

This week I shared a sentimental dinner with three old friends I made during that Bicentennial season. We got together at a restaurant in Washington, the city that brought us together all those decades ago. Back then, we were young people working for a reform-minded member of Congress, one of the 92 Democrats freshly elected to the House in 1974. They were called “Watergate babies,” because their election — an off-year landslide for Democrats that set the stage for Jimmy Carter’s White House win two years later — was seen as a repudiation of years of scandal and economic decline under Republican leadership.

It was a fraught time in America. During that 1974 election season, I was the editor of a tiny daily newspaper in a Corn Belt county seat, where the biggest controversy wasn’t Richard Nixon’s resignation in shame that August, but rather the fight to ratify the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. People said the ERA would allow men to use women’s bathrooms and would mean that men and women would compete against each other on sports teams. Do those worries sound familiar today? (One more question: Can somebody please explain this American fixation on rest rooms and gender purity?)

In the couple of years leading up to that election, we had worried that the president was surrounded by “yes-men” who wouldn’t restrain his darker tendencies, which was eventually proven true when top White House officials went to prison for their Watergate offenses. We had warned against unchecked executive power after Nixon imposed a freeze on all wages and prices, undermining generations of conservative rhetoric about the nation’s free market system (and eventually, when the controls expired, leading to disastrous inflation and joblessness). When President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, Americans were revolted by the sense that the nation’s stated standard of equal justice for all had been forever weakened.

Some months after that election, the newly-elected congressman from our mainly rural district in northwestern Indiana, Floyd Fithian, asked me to come to Washington as his press secretary. He was a good man, a clear thinker and a hard worker. I stayed for four years, handling both press relations and some legislative matters, before returning to journalism. My staff colleagues both in Washington and in Indiana were mostly, like me and like a lot of congressional aides today, young and energetic.

Over dinner this week, as we shared memories from decades ago, I was reminded of the nation’s bicentennial celebration: On the 4th of July, Washington hosted a huge parade, and that evening perhaps a million people came together on the National Mall for what was said to be the biggest fireworks show in history. “The mood of the crowd was that expected at a family birthday party — cheerful and relaxed,” The New York Times reported the next day. I recall walking through the huge and diverse crowd at dusk on my way to a rooftop celebration hosted by one of this week’s dinner companions, where we watched the fireworks burst in midair over the Potomac. It was long after midnight when I made my way back across the Mall, which by that time was nearly empty.

Feeling patriotic that warm night, I decided to visit the Capitol. Security wasn’t as tight then as it is now; with my congressional staff ID, I was allowed to wander through Statuary Hall and into the Rotunda. Looking up, I stared at a 4,664-square-foot painting that hangs some 15 stories above the rotunda floor, The Apotheosis of Washington. It depicts the nation’s first president seated in the heavens among figures of mythology, flanked by the goddesses of liberty and victory.1

There, in the symbolic heart of our democracy, on the very bicentennial of the nation’s birth, I was awestruck by my comfortable pride in being an American.

It's a moment I have recalled often in recent years, always with a growing sense of sorrow at how deeply disappointed we have grown in what the United States has become. The American Psychological Association reported late last year that 77 percent of Americans consider the future of the nation a significant source of stress in their lives.2 Even so, our sense of pride is hard to shake: two-thirds of Americans still say they are extremely or very proud to be American — which, while sturdy, is down from the three-quarters who boasted of that pride early in the 21^st century.

As the turmoil of the Trump presidency begins to be felt, however, opinion is shifting. Trump’s approval rating has dropped in the days since he first announced sweeping tariffs, with most voters saying his moves will hurt the economy in both the short- and long-term.3 In coming months — as voters absorb the reality of sharp cuts in popular programs, and as Trump fails to deliver on his promises to control inflation while reducing taxes and cutting spending dramatically — the mood of voters likely will turn even more sour. The University of Virginia’s Center for Politics this week predicted that Democrats would win control of the House next year.4

In some ways, then, it’s beginning to sound a lot like 50 years ago: A president surrounded by loyalists who won’t restrain his worst impulses, an economy in stress, a sense that justice for all is a slogan that doesn’t really apply anymore. Could we be poised for a political shift, then, in our semiquincentennial year?

Over that dinner and a couple of beers this week, one of my office-mates from that post-Watergate period on Capitol Hill offered a confident assessment: “It’s going to be 1974 all over again,” he said, predicting a powerful rebuke of the sitting president in next year’s midterm elections.

It’s sweet to consider the potential to hold the White House to account, a likely consequence if Democrats win control of the House. But there are hurdles that must be cleared if that’s going to happen.

First, we must recognize that we’ve become a nation of people who voice little faith in its future, regardless of which party is in power. That offers an opportunity to organizations and candidates who can credibly present a contrast with the status quo. At the end of last year, just 19 percent of Americans said the country was headed in the right direction — a huge opportunity for advocates of change.5 Of course, nobody is going to create a work of art showing today’s leaders ascending to stature among the gods, but success usually follows those who present a positive vision. The American philosopher William James is widely credited with saying, “Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.”

Second, we need to recognize that the 21^st century media landscape means that many citizens don’t receive credible information about what’s going on — so that, unlike a half-century ago, public opinion won’t necessarily shift as circumstances do. Fox News and its imitators do their best to suppress information that’s critical of the president, and online influencers gave Trump extra help last year. But that dynamic will surely be complicated as economic difficulties created by Trump policies begin to affect everyday lives. To encourage reality-based decision-making by voters, we must support news outlets that respect facts — especially the emerging ecosystem of non-profit journalism, including the public broadcasting outlets that are on the verge of losing government funding.

Third, while political success doesn’t always follow campaign money, it usually does — which means that both donations and activism are essential to electing a new Congress. Last year, 94 percent of the House races and 88 percent of the Senate races were won by the top-spending candidates.6 Even so, hard work matters: While the congressman I worked for in the 1970s got a lift from the post-Watergate tide, he had engaged in a five-year quest to oust a bad incumbent. The time is now to begin working on behalf of under-resourced candidates, so they will be poised to take advantage of likely rising voter resentment of Washington’s failures.

It’s not that we should welcome the adversity presented by Trump’s malfeasance and the complicity of the Republican-led Congress. But neither should we fail to take advantage of its effects. Winston Churchill, whose inspirational leadership sustained England during World War II, summed it up well with a reference to that notion of optimism, purportedly saying, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

Which, then, is where we might ideally find ourselves now: to be motivated, rather than downtrodden, by the ineptitude and cruelty of what’s coming from Washington. If the national mood is sagging, it’s our challenge to present a different vision. Indeed, the gift we must help deliver to the nation around the time of its 250^th birthday is just that: a rebirth of hope.

After all, the word semiquincentennial means, literally, that we’re halfway to our 500^th birthday. So it’s a word based in optimism — which is what we must bring to the fight if we hope to win. I want to again feel that comfortable patriotism, and celebrate it at this perilous time in our history.

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ENDNOTE

THANK YOU for reading The Upstate American, and for joining us in the conversation about our common ground, this great country. As we together navigate these challenging times, I hope you’ll join us again next week — or send me a message with ideas you’d like to see us address.

-Rex Smith

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