Many visiting Europeans are stunned by the huge number of derelict and otherwise empty buildings we have in the U.S. 

Most of our cities show signs of manufacturing blight. Especially Northern and Rust Belt cities. In this state, a city does not qualify as a city unless it can show several shuttered factories, an empty mall, vacant store fronts, office buildings half-empty, and maybe an armory.

Many of our small towns suffer the same blight with old school buildings and industrial carcasses. Upstate New Yorkers have grown up with the sight of them. To them they are as much a part of the landscape as maple trees.

European visitors are shocked by the same sight. This is because Europeans do not have enough spare space to allow this. They cannot afford it. So they knock down or re-use old buildings. We, on the other hand, are rich enough to leave the bodies where they collapsed. The upstate village where I graduated high school is still home to the remains of a factory that failed in the 1930’s.

We are in the midst of adding to the body count of unused buildings. Before the coronavirus struck, we were losing shopping malls. One big bank predicted we will lose 25 percent of our malls by 2022. About 9,000 stores closed last year. Many were in malls.

The virus will surely steepen the decline. Victoria’s Secret announced it will close about 250 stores in the U.S. and Canada. Already shaky Macy’s reported that its sales fell 45 percent. Bell-ringers are warming up the muffled bells. JCPenney and J. Crew have filed for bankruptcy. Lord & Taylor is looking at liquidation. Neiman Marcus is bankrupt. Nordstrom is closing 15 stores. 

Meanwhile, small businesses are vacating downtown and mini-malls. Many colleges and universities are shrinking because the pool of available students has shrunk. Some may go under.

Office buildings in cities are somewhat empty, because so many office workers are lately home workers. Facebook, Google and Microsoft say most of their workers will work from home until 2021. I have to believe many companies will simply occupy less office space in the future. How are you going to lure them back to the office, after they have seen home-cooked lunch?

Don’t forget movie theaters. They are dark now because of the virus. Many will never reopen. They were already edging toward the abyss. The virus is jettisoning them into it.

Old-line churches have struggled for years. This virus may have people on their knees. But the praying has been at home. Some churches will perish.

The country will see thousands of clinics, shops, florists and mom and pops of all types close. Wait, they are closed now, you say. Thousands will not reopen. 

Local governments will take similar measures. My county is cutting $1 million from its modest budget. It is closing one of its DMV offices.

My point is that this country is going to look like a cemetery for deceased buildings. Even when the economy grows healthy again. And I believe it will. We knew more of our economy would go online down the road. The virus has brought the road to us. Down the road is no longer down.

We are accustomed to seeing empty shops on Main Street. And empty factories here and there. And the odd shuttered shopping mall. Well, the view from the highway is not likely to improve.        

Tom Morgan writes about political, financial, and other subjects from his home in upstate New York. Write Tom at tomasinmorgan@yahoo.com or read more of his writing at tomasinmorgan.com.

Like most Americans, I have always considered the United States an exceptional country. We possess a political system built on checks and balances, an ideal of giving voice to ordinary people across a diverse land, and a Constitution that favors finding common ground among them. Our economy, at its best, offers opportunity, rewards innovation, and makes it possible for people from humble circumstances to succeed and thrive. Our civic spirit, despite hiccups and political conflict, has over the long haul pointed us toward tolerance, broadening civil rights, and encouraging participation from the neighborhood to Capitol Hill. 

 Recently, there has been a spate of public musing about “the end of American exceptionalism.” This is not new: conservatives have been lamenting our “decline” for years, while there are significant portions of the population for whom the promise of America never quite became real. But the coronavirus has laid bare a country fumbling for a response; a federal government that, despite pockets of brilliance, has failed overall to protect and offer guidance to Americans; a health-care system that has been forced to scramble for the most basic supplies; and an economic downturn that has wreaked disproportionate havoc on the lives of middle-class and wage-earning Americans.

 Yet even before this crisis, there was reason to question whether the U.S. truly is exceptional. This is worth spending some time on, because in the coming months of this election year you will no doubt hear grandiose claims about the U.S.’s virtues. They demand an honest accounting of where we excel and where we fall short.

 Let’s take a quick tour. In education, for instance, the OECD ranked the U.S. as sixth most-educated in 2018; Canada came in first place. We do even worse on student test scores for reading, math, and science, where the U.S. in 2018 ranked 36th in math and 17th in reading. There was a time when our infrastructure was the envy of the world. Now it’s Singapore, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong; we’re not even in the top 10. In health care, World Population Review ranks us 37th. On a broad ranking of quality of life — that is, which countries offer the best chances for a healthy, safe, and prosperous life ahead — you’d want to be in Denmark, Switzerland, or Finland; on the Bloomberg “Healthiest Country” index, the U.S. didn’t make the top 20. In fact, in a separate look at life expectancy in the 36 OECD countries, we rank 29th. 

 Which country is perceived as having the most advanced technology? Japan (placed 4th). Where is democracy strongest? The Economist Intelligence Unit, measuring the state of democracy in 167 countries, put Norway and Iceland at the top, with the U.S. coming in 25th. Which country is viewed as possessing the most stable economy? Switzerland, Canada, and Germany top US News & World Report’s list. The U.S. comes in 15th. To be sure, on various indexes of military strength, we rank first in the world. But then, we also rank highest among the G7 nations for income inequality.

 I don’t want to make your eyes glaze over with numbers. And, in fact, the measures I cited might not be the ones you would pick. Feel free to go online and search for “country rankings by…” whatever you’re curious about. What you’ll find is a mixed picture of the U.S., quite apart from anything caused by the pandemic. It didn’t rob us of our “exceptional” status. We’ve been doing that all on our own for years.

 Not long ago, the writer Fintan O’Toole had a widely read piece in which he said, “However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans.” When I read articles like that, I think they miss a key point. I don’t feel sorry for us. Because what I said at the beginning of this commentary still holds true: our political system, our economic potential, and our civic spirit remain the cornerstones of a great nation.

 We have a choice. We can continue to lose ground globally. But if we choose to build and strive to reach our potential, we can become, without doubt, truly exceptional again.        

Lee Hamilton, 89, is a senior advisor for the Indiana University (IU) Center on Representative Government, distinguished scholar at IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, and professor of practice at the IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Hamilton, a Democrat, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years (1965-1999), representing a district in south central Indiana.