What is America’s Political Future Beyond the 250th Anniversary?
by Donald Menzel
The 250th anniversary of the United States is a fitting time to reflect on American politics and its future. I write not as a futurist or historian, but as a patriot who believes in America’s fundamental goodness and Lincoln’s promise of a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men [citizens] are created equal.”
This essay imagines a political future shaped by the present but not confined to it. The future begins in the present, and one lesson I have learned is how strongly the “here and now” shapes our sense of what lies ahead. Too often, the future becomes merely a projection of current conditions—a kind of mirage. But it need not be so. In this essay, I will try to imagine a political future that does not simply mirror the present, even though the present must be the starting point.
Thoughts on the Political Present
Politics is often seen as self-serving and distasteful, a view many Americans share. Yet when practiced by genuine public servants, politics can express respect and concern for people’s well-being. It is also about conflict over resources and advantages. As political scientist Harold Lasswell wrote in 1936, politics concerns “who gets what, when, and how,” while David Easton (1953) called it “the authoritative allocation of values for society as a whole.”
The Near Political Future
If politics is about “who gets what, when, and how,” income distribution offers one measure of winners and losers. Most Americans are not billionaires, yet nearly one-third of the world’s 3,000 billionaires live in the United States, alongside Elon Musk, the first trillionaire. Wealth inequality is rising. The 2024 U.S. Gini Index is 41.8 and climbing. Tax policies that favor investment income over wages have widened the gap between the “haves” and “have-nots,” creating disparities not seen since the robber barons in the Gilded Age. The likely political effects are declining trust in government, sharper civil conflict, and greater violence, including assassinations. Another near-term issue is the aftermath of the MAGA movement and the Trump era. MAGA populism may fade as the America First agenda loses coherence. A brighter future may follow a period of political falsehoods, retribution, voter suppression, disregard for the rule of law, politicized institutions, and disrespect for Congress. Possible signs of renewal include sustained Democratic victories beginning with the 2026 midterm elections, constitutional amendments limiting presidential pardons and war-making powers, and even a third impeachment of an already twice-impeached president and his removal from office.
The Distant Political Future
After near-term turbulence, American democracy may experience renewal. Hope may again open to the world, echoing the Statue of Liberty’s welcome to the “tired,” “poor,” and “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Hope is the social glue of a multicultural democracy. To paraphrase former President Barack Obama’s remarks at the opening of the Presidential Center in Chicago, we may live in “mean times,” but America has endured mean times before and emerged as a better nation where hope and opportunity can thrive. So, the reader may ask, “What else might America’s political future hold beyond the 250th anniversary?” Perhaps I have already said enough. As noted at the outset, I am not a futurist. So, Dear Reader, let your imagination roam: What do you think lies in the distant political future?
The Architects of Political Analysis
Harold Dwight Lasswell (1902–1978) was a “one-man university” whose prolific work bridged the gaps between political science, psychology, and sociology. Earning his PhD at the University of Chicago at just 24, he became a driving force of the “behavioral revolution,” shifting the field from abstract ideals to the observation of actual human behavior. He is most famous for his 1936 definition of politics as the study of “who gets what, when, and how,” viewing the political process as a struggle among elite groups over values such as income, deference, and safety. His ultimate goal was to establish the “policy sciences,” an interdisciplinary approach that uses social science research to solve public problems and promote a “commonwealth of human dignity.”
David Easton (1917–2014), a Canadian-born scholar who taught political theory at the University of Chicago for fifty years, revolutionized the discipline by introducing “systems theory.” He famously defined politics in 1953 as the “authoritative allocation of values for a society,” distinguishing the political system by its unique power to make decisions that are binding on all citizens. Easton’s model treats the political system like a living organism that absorbs “inputs”—comprising societal “demands” and “support” (legitimacy)—and converts them within a “black box” into “outputs,” such as policies and laws. He emphasized the importance of the “feedback loop,” where the societal effects of these policies flow back into the system as new inputs.
Donald C. Menzel, Ph.D., is a past president of the American Society for Public Administration, author and international speaker on ethics reform. Don organized OLLI-USF’s China Special Interest Group. He also served as an OLLI-USF faculty member for over 10 years. Together with his wife, Kay, Don divides his time between Florida and Colorado, and contributes commentary on life’s moments and current issues in both locations.
Memories of George Hyde
In OLLI Connects, I have been following and admiring George Hyde’s development as a writer of essays. George worked hard at developing his craft. Take a look at all he accomplished over an 18-month period. With his examples in mind and in honor of George Hyde’s legacy, I hope OLLI writers will try their hand at writing essays too. As senior writers, we have experienced a vast sociological and historical perspective that needs to be shared of how the world was…is…and…could be. Now it’s our time to write—a very readable paperback on how to get started is “To Show and To Tell” by Philip Lopate. — Liesse Chable
April 2025 issue – George explores what good teaching looks like with examples of lectures by two exemplary professors from St. Leo’s University.
May 2025 issue – George introduces us to stories of award-winning volunteers and Olli teachers who have taught more than ten courses.
July 2025 – George presents his retrospective thinking on how things have changed in our culture, for better or worse, toward consumer service. His writing voice charms and tells anecdotes, humorous and serious by turns, offered for no other reason than pure public service.
August 2025 – George’s writing voice now full of personality, he highlights ‘cool’ vacations he had taken over the years to get away from the summer heat of Tampa, while reminding us of Olli’s travel services and recommendations.
January 2026 – George makes a surprising discovery watching a football half-time ad by USF that features Jeanne Dyer, director of Olli’s technical classes, as part of USF’s first undergraduate class 70 years ago. George works that find into a delightful interview about the big accomplishments in life.
Liesse Chable has a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Linguistics from Hunter College in NYC and did graduate work at McGill University in Montreal. She taught Special Education in Upstate NY in the Adirondacks for five years and worked another five years for the NY State Department of Health managing newsletters and the annual report. Liesse started two New York non-profits, the Center for Early Learning in Glens Falls, and later Guilderland Study Circles, an environmental interest group. Liesse was accepted into a program with the New York State Writers Institute and has been teaching and studying writing for many years.
George gave me a vivid memory and a profound insight during a meeting of an OLLI committee that I’ll leave nameless. We were discussing—for the umpteenth time—a project that seemed desirable, but that we never managed to get started. During a pause George said, “Unless one person chooses to take this on as personal crusade, it will never happen.” I instantly realized that he was right and made the project my personal crusade. It doesn’t matter what the project was, nor whether it worked out. The important thing was his heart-of-the-issue analysis which I now use in all of my volunteer work with OLLI and other organizations. A task that someone “owns” has a good chance of getting done. A task that nobody owns will never be completed. — Al Carlson
My interactions with George ranged from shared committee work and Zoom interviews for OLLI promotional videos to our collaboration on OLLI Connects. He was the consummate professional—conscientious, respectful of deadlines, and responsive to our mission. Over eighteen months, his material was consistently timely, sharp, and witty.
At Joseph’s retirement party, I sat with George and his wife, chatting about opera and future writing projects. Two days later, he sent me this month’s feature article. We scheduled it for July. Little did I know it would be his last.
George will be missed. What remains is the clarity of his voice on the page. — Theresa D’Aiuto Sokol
The OLLI Sketchbook
To mark the 250th anniversary of the American experiment on July 4, 2026, we created a double gallery of editorial cartoons. The set of vintage cartoons by Art Henrikson clearly displays sentiments of pride, celebration, and routine controversy. In contrast, the set of modern, a.i.-assisted cartoons reflects the current mood after more than ten turbulent years marred by political and social unrest, a global pandemic and successive foreign wars and military actions. — Editor
Cartoons by Art Henrikson
Americans celebrate Independence Day by reflecting on the past and dreaming of the future. Unlike New Year’s Eve, July 4 focuses on our nation, not ourselves. Emotions range from pride and despair to gratitude and hopefulness. In the July 4 cartoons my dad drew over 30 years, he used his pen to capture the varied emotions of Americans. — Diane Henrikson Russell, Curator. Art Henrikson Archive.
Modern Cartoons Created by A.I.
The modern gallery of cartoons was crafted with assistance of two A.I. platforms, Claude by Anthropic, and Firefly by Adobe. After feeding Claude the vintage cartoons pictured above, the A.I. suggested a series of scenes related to those editorial drawings, yet updated to appropriately embody the present moment. Once ideas were selected, those scenes were adjusted or adopted as inspiration for related scenarios. After all four scenarios were locked in, Claude furnished the appropriate prompts to Adobe Firefly together with style examples previously used in our OLLI Sketchbook cartoons.— Editor
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