At the end of what the pundits are universally calling the American Century, the future is bright in these vast United States. As Larry Summers, US deputy treasury secretary liked to say a few years ago: "The only thing we have to fear is lack of fear itself."
Pity any poor soul running for president. Without the ability to mobilise voters around policy discontent, the next election threatens to rest on personality and like-ability even more than usual. After all, what's to fight about? American power and influence are unquestionably at their zenith. It comes down, to paraphrase author and globalisation guru Thomas Friedman, to the five gas stations theory of the world (Forget calling it petrol. It's to be called gas now.)
This is how Mr Friedman sees it. First there is the Japanese gas station. Gas costs 70p per litre. Four men in white uniforms and gloves, all with lifetime employment contracts, pump your gas, clean your windows, change your oil, and smile and wave as you drive away in peace.
Second is the US gas station. Gas costs 25p per litre, but you pump it yourself, wash your own windows and fill your own tyres with air. As you drive away, four homeless people try to steal your hubcaps.
Third is the European gas station. Gas there also costs 70p per litre. There is one man on duty. He grudgingly pumps your gas and changes your oil, all the time reminding you that his union contract say he must do only that much and not do windows. He only works 32 hours a week and has 90 minutes for lunch, during which time the station is closed. He also has six weeks vacation over the summer.
Fourth is the developing nation gas station. Fifteen people work there and they are all cousins. When you drive in nobody pays attention because they are all talking to each other. Gas is only 6p per litre because it is subsidised by the government, but only one of the six pumps actually works. The others are broken while they await replacement parts to be flown in from Europe. The place is run down because the owner lives in Zurich and doesn't know that half the employees actually live in the repair shops and use the car-wash equipment to shower.
Lastly there is the communist gas station. Gas there is only 50p per litre, but there is none because the four guys who work there have sold it on the black market for 70p per litre.
Everyone is being forced towards America's gas station. "If you are not an American and don't know how to pump your own gas, I suggest you learn . . . globalisation is globalising Anglo-American style capitalism and the "Golden Straitjacket". It is globalising American culture and the cultural icons. It is globalising the best of America and the worst of America," writes Friedman in his much discussed book The Lexus and The Olive Tree.
The American ideal of freedom and economic progress has triumphed this century over fascism and communism. And Americans know it. The boom times have created an extraordinary economic prosperity which it is difficult to overstate. The US GDP (gross domestic product) in 1998 is more than $8 trillion dollars, exceeding the output of the entire European Union which has 100 million more people. Incomes per person are, on average, 45 per cent higher in America than in Europe.
The average American is now heavily invested in the US stock market, banking that its continued growth will fund retirement. But the unworldly riches gained in the last few years, particularly in the technology sector of the market is creating a strange anxiety.
"Gosh, I bought 100 shares of eBay earlier this year at $117 a share. It's now at $178 a share. I'm really upset I didn't buy more," says my friend Jeffrey.
Another person writes to a newspaper advice columnist. He bought 100 shares of Qualcomm Inc. for $30 a share in January. The stock is now at $384 a share. It is nail-biting time. Should he sell now or wait?
In fact, there is a strange contradiction afoot about how Americans view themselves and their families as opposed to their views of the nation as a whole. Author David Whitman calls it, in his book of the same name, The Optimism Gap. Most people rate their own lives at around eight on a scale of 10, feeling pretty good about their prospects. But in what Whitman calls the "I'm OK, they're not," syndrome, most people have never been gloomier about the state of the nation and feel it is in decline.
It is not difficult to see why. Some of the most publicised news events in the US seem to depict a country consumed by violence. From the barrage of school shootings committed by disaffected teenagers, to the deadly outbursts of workplace killings by frustrated and enraged "average" guys, America appears to be a place of barely contained rage, with guns and rifles only too easy to obtain.
It seems to be a place in many ways adrift in values, confused and ambivalent about what it means to be human, much less American. No politician is more important, or arguably, as influential as talk show host Oprah Winfrey, whose daily show includes a segment called spirit, that seeks to teach us how to live.
What is curious here is the gap between perception and reality. By any measure, not just economic, things have never been better in the US. The national crime rate has dropped 20 per cent from its peak in the early 1990s. Homicide rates are the lowest in 30 years. Illegal drug use is down; some 17 per cent of students had tried cocaine in 1986 - now less than seven per cent have tried it.
In 1965, 42 per cent of Americans smoked. Now, 25 per cent do. Teen pregnancy rates are at the lowest since 1975. Most cancers are down. And the American life expectancy is now 76 years - up from 54 years when the second World War generation was born.
There is good news for the environment also. Twenty-five years ago, according to Gregg Easterbrook writing in The New Republic, only one third of America's lakes and rivers were safe for swimming. Now two thirds are. Toxic emissions by industry declined 46 per cent from 1988 to 1996, and smog has declined by a third since 1970.
And then of course there is the economy. But, as Robert Samuelson writes in The Good Life and Its Discontents: "There can never be enough prosperity." Polls show that no matter how much money an American has, he believes that twice as much is required.
Despite all the good numbers and the good life, it is this nagging discontent that characterises the American mind as we approach the end of the century. And while there is a hunger for a new vision of how to live, there is also anxiety with any political visionary who might appear on the scene. Best to stick with the tried.
"We're living in an age with very few romantics and visionaries, University of Rochester political scientist John Mueller tells The New Republic. "People with vast, sweeping visions caused most of this centuries problems. Most of the time you don't want leaders with visions, you want society run by cautious pragmatists."
With money in the bank, global export of its goods and culture, and the good times rolling along, bland pragmatism is what America seeks, and what it will most likely get in the post-Clinton era. But just don't expect it to feel good.
Elaine Lafferty can be contacted at elainelafferty@ireland.com