Michael Goodwin asks:

Can the United States survive the remaining 3 1/2 years of the Obama presidency? That was the question I asked a well-known veteran of Washington politics and national-security issues. Though a Democrat, he is trusted and respected by both parties for his many years of advice and troubleshooting service to the nation.

I asked the question because our long conversation reflected shared worries about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and America’s retreat. We discussed the disasters of Syria, Benghazi and Obama’s strange support for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi in Egypt. We agreed the odds were growing that Iran would get a nuclear weapon and feared what it would mean for Israel and our Arab allies.

We expressed shock at the lasting damage done to our intelligence agencies by Edward Snowden, the sloppy background check that enabled him to get security clearance in the first place and the Keystone Kops effort to capture him. We winced that our nation’s reputation was an international punch line as Russia and China mocked our president.

Given that context, my question of whether America can survive Obama was not just a figure of speech or an exaggerated musing. I meant it literally.

My friend understood my meaning.

“I don’t know,” he said. When I pressed him, he reviewed the scope of the global disorder we had just discussed, and repeated his answer. “I don’t know,” he said a second time. …

Maybe we will be fine. But the sense that the walls are closing in on us and that we are showing weakness to an emboldened, hostile world fills me with dread. I have a growing fear we are on the verge of a catastrophe.

“Verge of a catastrophe” sounds like cockeyed optimism. But Frank DeMartini argues against Goodwin’s gloom:

This comment probably would have left me a little nervous too had I not been in my 50s now.  You see, I lived through the 60s, Vietnam, Watergate and Jimmy Carter.  I’ve heard many times that the United States was going down for the count.  In fact, it was something that the news quoted quite often in my childhood.  Let’s be honest, we almost came to a Revolution over Vietnam and we almost became a second rate country under Jimmy Carter who by the way is still the worst President we’ve had in my lifetime.  Obama is not even close.  At least, Obama with all of his negatives seems to understand defense (a little).

I’ve lived through the early Reagan years when we were being told on an almost daily basis that Japan and Germany were going to overtake us.  Well, we all know the didn’t.  In fact, that conversation has completely stopped.  Now, we’re afraid of China in the same way.  This, of course, is the same China that cannot afford to feed most of its occupants. …

In 1980, when Jimmy Carter was running for re-election, we had the worst stagflation anyone could remember.  Inflation was in Double Digits and Interest rates were at an all time high.  The phrase misery index was coined for the first time to describe how bad things were.  Borrowing was even harder than it is now because of the huge interest rates.  Savings were good if you have any money to save because you could actually get 20% on a regular bank CD.

From a foreign affairs standpoint, we were a joke.  It started with Afghanistan.  Carter decided to boycott the Russian Olympics as a result.  Russia didn’t care, they just ignored the then occupier of the White House.  Pathetic foreign policy continued with the Iran Hostage Crisis which made Ted Koppel a star.  In fact, even Carter’s attempt at a military mission to rescue the hostages proved to be a disaster.  Our helicopters didn’t even make it to hostile airspace and they went down.

So, don’t tell me that America cannot survive another three years of the Obama Administration.  I’m not worried.  I am worried about the short term effects of his policies, but I’m not worried about anything much else.  We will survive.  We always do.

Daniel Henninger splits the difference due to a recent event:

Mark July 3, 2013, as the day Big Government finally imploded.

July 3 was the quiet afternoon that a deputy assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy announced in a blog post that the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate would be delayed one year. Something about the “complexity of the requirements.” The Fourth’s fireworks couldn’t hold a candle to the sound of the U.S. government finally hitting the wall.

Since at least 1789, America’s conservatives and liberals have argued about the proper role of government. Home library shelves across the land splinter and creak beneath the weight of books arguing the case for individual liberty or for government-led social justice. World Wrestling smackdowns are nothing compared with Hayek vs. Rawls.

Maybe we have been listening to the wrong experts. Philosophers and pundits aren’t going to tell us anything new about government. The one-year rollover of ObamaCare because of its “complexity” suggests it’s time to call in the physicists, the people who study black holes and death stars. That’s what the federal government looks like after expanding ever outward for the past 224 years.

Even if you are a liberal and support the goals of the Affordable Care Act, there has to be an emerging sense that maybe the law’s theorists missed a signal from life outside the castle walls. While they troweled brick after brick into a 2,000-page law, the rest of the world was reshaping itself into smaller, more nimble units whose defining metaphor is the 140-character Twitter message. …

On July 5, the administration announced into the holiday void that because of “operational barriers” to IRS oversight, individuals would be allowed to self-report their income to qualify for the law’s subsidies.

If the ObamaCare meltdown were a one-off, the system could dismiss it as a legislative misfire and move on, as always. But ObamaCare’s problems are not unique. Important parts of the federal government are breaking down almost simultaneously.

The National Security Agency has conservative philosophers upset that its surveillance program is ushering in Big Brother. What’s more concretely frightening is that a dweeb like Edward Snowden could download the content of the NSA’s computers onto a thumb drive and walk out of the world’s “most secretive” agency. Here’s the short answer: The NSA has 40,000 employees. (Some say it’s as high as 55,000, but it’s a secret.)

Echoing that, when the IRS’s audits of conservative groups emerged, the agency managers’ defense was that the IRS is too big for anyone to know what its agents are doing. Thus both the NSA and IRS are too big to avoid endangering the public.

It is hard to imagine a more apolitical federal function than the nation’s weather satellites. The ones we have—to predict hurricanes and such—are about to wear out and need to be replaced. Can’t do it. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the Pentagon have been trying to replace the old weather satellites, since 1994. The Government Accountability Office says “we are looking at potentially a 17-month gap” in this crucial weather data. NOAA has good scientists whose bad luck is they work for a collapsing constellation of bureaucracies.

The State Department missed signs of the Arab Spring’s insurrections in late 2010 despite warnings from outside groups. Egypt is in flames, in part, because State for years has been mainly a massive, drifting bureaucracy. Little wonder Hillary Clinton spent four years in flight from the place. …

To call the U.S. federal government a black hole is a disservice to black holes, which have a neutral majesty. Excepting the military’s fighting units, the federal government has become a giant slug, like Jabba the Hutt, inert but dangerous. Like Jabba, the government increasingly survives by issuing authoritarian decrees from this or that agency. Barack Obama, essentially a publicist for Jabba’s world of federal fat, euphemized this mess Monday as the American people’s “democracy.”

Thomas Jefferson, who must be rolling in his grave, said the way to ensure good government was to divide it among the many. Some states and cities are indeed reworking their functions in efficient, innovative ways. But Washington is oblivious to life beyond the Beltway.

Those indispensable but dying weather satellites are a metaphor for the U.S. now. Whether ObamaCare or the border fence, Washington is winding down into a black hole of its own making. The debate’s over. Liberalism will be swept into this vortex, too.