‘Semiquincentennial’ might not have the ring of bicentennial, but we could use a reminder that America has always been great because it stands for great things.
‘Semiquincentennial’ might not have the same ring as bicentennial, but we could use a reminder that America has always been great because it stands for great things.
T oday marks America’s 247th birthday. Three years from now, in 2026, we will reach our next milestone: the 250th. We should be preparing to make it a giant celebration of our nation, its founding, the enduring principles of that founding, and our unique constitutional system of government.
Americans over the age of 50 will remember the yearlong celebration of our Bicentennial in 1976, which reached a fever pitch in July of that year. I was four years old for most of the year, so it is literally the earliest year I remember. I recall the tall-ships flotilla in New York and Boston harbors, and my grandfather building a replica of the USS Constitution (which we still have) and painting the whole collectible series of glass Log Cabin syrup bottles, which came with shaped designs like the Liberty Bell.
It is hard to convey to anyone who did not live through 1976 how much patriotic content pervaded that year. The country was taken over by red, white, and blue and Revolutionary-era men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing, costumes, room décor, merchandise, TV programming, and much, much more. There was, of course, a Bob Hope Bicentennial Special. Queen Elizabeth II toured the East Coast in the royal yacht to show Britain’s support for the legacy of its onetime colony. Marvel Comics put out a comic book series on “Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles.” You could open a Bicentennial-themed Sears catalog. Latrobe, Pa., even created a Mister Rogers bicentennial beer stein.
In sports, Cubs outfielder Rick Monday became a popular hero in April for snatching an American flag from protesters who were trying to burn it in the outfield at Dodger Stadium. The baseball, NBA, and NHL all-star games and the Final Four were all held in Philadelphia that year. These 1976 commercials for Coca-Cola and Budweiser give a sense of what 1976 was like:
CBS ran a “Bicentennial Minute” series of public-service spots recounting moments in American history from 1974 through 1976. ABC News had its own red, white, and blue “Bicentennial Center” studio. For kids, Schoolhouse Rock dedicated an entire year of children’s cartoons to educating us in the American Revolution and the structure of the Constitution, with memorable songs about “No More Kings,” “Elbow Room” (the westward expansion of the country), the “Great American Melting Pot,” “I’m Just a Bill” (on the legislative process), and even a song made out of the preamble of the Constitution. Sesame Street wove bicentennial and civic themes into its programming and put out a bicentennial calendar.
Coming in the midst of a terribly difficult decade for American pride, the 1976 bicentennial was a colossal celebration of the nation. In July 1973, as the Watergate scandal was unfolding, the New York Times reported that “a shifting mood, widespread public and Congressional lack of interest, partisan politics and long inaction have resulted in a considerable scaling down of the nation’s plans to commemorate its bicentennial.” By the time the big year arrived, that had changed entirely. The Bicentennial kicked off a boom in interest in the nation’s history that drew in people of every political persuasion and “led to the creation of thousands of new museums, historical societies, and history programs that shared a more complete story of the American past,” according to Time magazine.
We might need a better name this time around than the awkward “Semiquincentennial,” but the idea of a huge celebration of America could hardly be better timed in a decade that opened with a global pandemic, race riots, an explosion of radical theories denouncing our nation’s founding, and a campaign against our presidential election that concluded with an attack on the Capitol itself. We could use a reminder that America has always been great because it stands for great things, and that it has, from the very beginning, led both the world and itself to seek ever more human liberty of every useful kind.
Gallup found last year that 65 percent of American adults were “proud” to be American, with a record-low 38 percent “extremely proud,” down from 70 percent in 2003. There is a partisan split: The “extremely proud” group includes 58 percent of Republicans, 34 percent of independents, and only 26 percent of Democrats. “All three major party groups show double-digit declines in pride compared with 2013, with Democrats’ 30-point decline the largest.” Even the framing of the question can dampen expressions of patriotism. A Fox News poll asking “Are you proud of the country today” showed just 39 percent saying yes, down from 51 percent in 2017 and 69 percent in 2011 — with Republicans down to 36 percent, ten points lower than Democrats.
A June 2022 Pew poll found that as many Americans (23 percent) said other countries were better than the United States as said that America stands above all others. The ratio of those saying other nations are better versus those saying America is the best was 42–10 among those age 18–29, 34–12 among Democrats, 55–5 among Democrats age 18–29, and 38–8 among Democrats age 30–49.
Donald Trump, to his credit, has taken the lead in proposing what he calls “a most spectacular birthday party . . . the best of all time,” featuring a yearlong “Great American State Fair” in Iowa (conveniently also the first state on the Republican primary calendar), “Patriot Games” high-school sporting contests, and the construction of a “National Garden of American Heroes.”
Trump is nothing if not a promoter of big, beautiful celebrations. And he’s not the only one thinking ahead. There’s an America 250 Foundation, with a bipartisan roster of current and former American dignitaries and historians including Anthony Kennedy, Jeanne Shaheen, Wilfred McClay, and Merrick Garland.
Any mention of patriotism produces gag reflexes from progressive voices in media and academia. In the Washington Post, for example, Theodore Johnson complains that “the semiquincentennial is far too important to be cast simply as a festival of uncritical patriotism. Rather, it should serve as a shared opportunity to deeply consider the gap between the country we actually are, and a country that has earned the title of ‘more perfect union.’”
Unfortunately, what we may lack is a president suitable to the moment. Joe Biden, even if he is still with us in 2026, leads a party that is visibly unconvinced that the American Founding was a good thing that ought to be celebrated rather than apologized for. Trump is seen by half the country as the face of a violent effort to overthrow the government. The nation is much bigger than the president (or for that matter Congress or the Supreme Court), but the president’s singular role makes it unfortunate that we may not have a head of state who is up to the task of leading a national celebration.
We have been fortunate in the past to have, at each 50-year interval, presidents who were well-suited to preside over a nationwide pageant trumpeting the virtues of the Founding and our patriotic ideals.
The president in 1826, John Quincy Adams, was the son of one of the authors of the Declaration itself and spent his formative years (from age 21 to 26) as part of the diplomatic missions of Revolutionary War America in France, the Netherlands, and Russia, concluding by accompanying his father’s mission to become the first American ambassador to Great Britain. The elder Adams, as well as the Declaration’s primary author, Thomas Jefferson, both famously died on July 4, 1826. Their loss was the president’s loss as well as the nation’s, and he symbolized the generational transition.
Five years earlier, as secretary of state, the younger Adams had given his own memorable July 4 address, laying out an early vision of exceptionalism in American foreign policy:
America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. For centuries to come, all the contests of . . . the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
The president in 1876, Ulysses S. Grant, was then in his final year in office. Grant was not just the man who led the armies that saved the union; he had also accepted the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4 13 years earlier, the day after the end of the battle of Gettysburg. Those two Union victories, one securing control of the Mississippi River and the other the largest battle ever fought in North America, effectively ended any hope of a Confederate military victory or a European intervention in the war, leaving the rebellion with only the hope of playing for time for the Union to weary of war and seek a negotiated resolution. July 4 had an additional significance for Grant, who spent the day at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia: It was the 21st birthday of his daughter.
The president in 1926, Calvin Coolidge, had himself been born on the Fourth of July in 1872. Coolidge’s July 4, 1926, speech on the principles of the Declaration of Independence is justly recalled today as perhaps the most classic summary of its enduring role in American thought:
It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.
The president in 1976, Gerald Ford, was a Navy veteran of the Pacific theater in the Second World War. Ford was a humble man whose presidency reflected the resiliency of the American constitutional system after Watergate, the resignation of Richard Nixon, and the American defeat in Vietnam. Ford, appointed to the vice presidency, had come to office declaring himself “a Ford, not a Lincoln” and pledging the end of “our long national nightmare,” so his stolidity was reassuring.
We could use more Spirit of ’76. Let us have leaders worthy of the nation the Founding Fathers bequeathed us.