When the nation celebrated its bicentennial, I remember tall ships visiting our ports, the Freedom Train hauling historic documents around the country and towns painting fire hydrants red, white and blue.

A hokey patriotism was everywhere then. After a decade of riots, protests, war and Watergate, it was also a sort of breath of fresh air. As we came together to celebrate the United States on its 200th birthday, you could almost feel the cynicism and fear dissipating.

We had a presidential candidate that year, Jimmy Carter, whose motto was “Why not the best?” 

Carter insisted we could have a government as good as our people — and he wasn’t being cynical. The president in 1976, Republican Gerald Ford, gave just a few modest speeches hailing the American experience. He made a point of telling the public that he delivered these speeches with a deep sense of honor and humility.

How far we’ve fallen in just half a century.

For the country’s 250th birthday, President Donald Trump, who has already ripped up the Rose Garden and torn down the East Wing of the White House, has covered much of the rest of the historic property with a huge claw-like stage for ultimate fighters to take each other on in mixed martial arts battles, something former Sen. John McCain called “human cockfighting” in 1996. McCain managed to get 36 states to ban the sport entirely.

Three decades later, thanks to Trump, ultimate fighters are taking center stage at the White House for the nation’s birthday. Instead of being ashamed of spoiling and despoiling the White House, Trump compared his huge combat cage to the Eiffel Tower, of all things, and declared he may “never, ever take it down.”

Is there a more perfect example of how crass Trump is?

It’s disheartening to watch my country losing faith in its own principles.

The thing is, though, that we don’t have to follow the hateful idiocy of those who want ultimate fighting on the grounds of the White House and goon squads patrolling our streets.

Our history shows that we can do better. In some ways, the American story is one of discovering how badly we’re botching something, from slavery to workers’ rights, then finding ways to fix it.

I’m under no illusion that the American story is a tale of steady progress. We’ve always moved ahead in fits and starts, sometimes falling back, sometimes racing ahead.

It has been a long while, though, since we’ve seen such a sustained era of error, with a rich elite living beyond the dreams of the kings of old while many of the rest of us worry about everything from gas prices to medical bills.

As a country, we’ve responded shamefully to our fears, blaming those among us who are struggling most instead of focusing on policy decisions that have consistently favored the wealthy and powerful. That’s something that people on both sides of the political divide can see plainly.

Our semiquincentennial is as good a time as any to start anew. After all, why not the best?