America in decline. Why?

Another year, another major publication with a cover story on our decline. Last year, Atlantic. This year, TIME. Same reason. Us unwashed don’t buy the liberal agenda of 2009, the same one we didn’t buy last year.

Here’s how TIME cover article author Fareed Zakaria (a refugee fresh from the nearly defunct Newsweek) reveals his longing for the “Blue Model” Obama has promised to restore:

The decisions that created today's growth — decisions about education, infrastructure and the like — were made decades ago. What we see today is an American economy that has boomed because of policies and developments of the 1950s and '60s: the interstate-highway system, massive funding for science and technology, a public-education system that was the envy of the world and generous immigration policies.

Why don’t we listen to the President, groans Zakaria figuratively:

Obama's efforts to preserve and even increase resources for core programs appear to be failing in a Congress determined to demonstrate its clout. But reducing funds for things like education, scientific research, air-traffic control, NASA, infrastructure and alternative energy will not produce much in savings, and it will hurt the economy's long-term growth. It would happen at the very moment that countries from Germany to South Korea to China are making large investments in education, science, technology and infrastructure.

Reader, you can turn to the Atlantic or TIME cover stories. Or you can go to the White House website. You don’t need more than one of the three.

In the end, along with so many liberals today, Zakaria throws up his hands in exasperation at democracy’s failures, saying “It's not that our democracy doesn't work; it's that it works only too well.”

Let’s hope so.