Lately, I've been thinking about where things went wrong. Donald Trump is the culmination, not the genesis, of America's nationalistic trend. I suspect that the turn came, ironically, at the moment of the West's greatest triumph, when Gorbachev embraced western values of democracy and capitalism, and the Soviet Union disintegrated.

Exploring the era, I came across this insanely prescient essay from 1992. I've never been a fan of David Gergen, but damn, he nailed this one. The article is firewalled, so I'll share a few of his predictions.

Staggered by an economic downturn that has taken a deeper psychological toll than expected and frustrated by a paralysis in its politics, the United States toward the end of 1991 turned increasingly pessimistic, inward and nationalistic...Insistent cries came along that the nation should embrace a new philosophy of putting America first: turn a hard, flinty eye toward economic competitors, said its advocates, and curtail the long tradition of generous idealism in foreign policy.

In a world where the outlook changes as often as the weather the question arises whether we shall ever again see a replay of early 1991, America the ascendant, or if that was the last gasp of a great nation visibly and sourly slipping. Will the United States during the 1990s still seek to build a new international regime, or will it slink away into a new isolationism? Will it remain an agent of openness and change, or will it close both its wallet and its borders?

While it remains rich, the country will think and act as if it is poor, choosing not to accept as idealistic and expensive a role as it has played in international affairs over the past 45 years. Absent a direct challenge to its national interest Washington will be more reluctant to assert its leadership in quelling dangerous conflicts...In its economic relationships, especially with Asia, the country will be tougher and more demanding. The standard by which policies will be judged will be much less of "What's in it for the world?" than "What's in it for us?"

In short even though the political candidates who espouse "America First" are unlikely to beat George Bush in 1992, their influence will linger. America seems destined to scale back its traditional role of international leadership even as it asserts a harder-edged policy of self-interest. It will be a superpower, but a most reluctant one. And if it fails to resolve its internal crises the face it turns toward the world will become very surly indeed.

Moreover, despite America's claim that it gave birth to the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s, other nations had to drag the Bush administration into a more ambitious campaign against ozone depletion. Indeed over the past two years America has been widely criticized in Europe and Japan as a major obstacle to a treaty on global warming.

Even in international trade, where the United States was for forty years the principal advocate of a liberal regime, recent trends have been worrisome. President Reagan was a strong apostle of free trade, but a 1989 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that during the 1980s most industrialized nations--including Japan--moved toward lower barriers, while the United States had the worst record for erecting new ones.

The political turning point came in November when a little-known Democrat in Pennsylvania shellacked the state's best-known Republican in a Senate race that was widely seen as a referendum on the Bush administration. Emphasizing a theme of "taking care of our own," Democrat Harris Wofford scored heavily with a television advertisement that said: "We shouldn't put American jobs on a fast track to Mexico or a slow boat to China." Wofford's victory traumatized the White House and convinced Democrats in Washington that they could frontally attack Bush on foreign policy. Democratic presidential contenders, tapping into growing economic fears, denounced the president for spending too much time on foreign affairs while neglecting domestic problems. Their speeches were reminiscent of Congressman Richard Gephardt's call for a new economic nationalism in the last presidential campaign. That appeal met with only limited success in 1988 but in recessionary times was striking a deeper chord within the populace.

Meanwhile the president faced a growing rebellion on his right flank that also spelled trouble in foreign affairs. Patrick Buchanan, a conservative journalist who once worked for Presidents Nixon and Reagan, declared his candidacy against Bush for the GOP nomination with a thunderous appeal for a new isolationism: bring home U.S. troops; stay out of foreign wars; eliminate foreign aid; end support for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank; treat Japan and Europe as economic predators and concentrate on "America First." David Duke, a Louisiana extremist who has become a permanent (and embarrassing) candidate for Republican office, also began to challenge President Bush with appeals to underlying racism and nativism. Neither man will defeat the president, but they will give greater legitimacy to fears and prejudices seething below the surface.

The most striking changes in American public opinion are the growing fears that the United States is rapidly losing its economic dominance and that Japan is overtaking it. When CBS asked respondents in 1989 which country would be the number one power in the world in the next century, 47 percent named the United States and 38 percent singled out Japan. When CBS-New York Times surveyors posed the same question in October 1991, only 25 percent chose the United States and 58 percent named Japan--a 41 percent swing in only four years.

While most Americans tend to place primary blame upon themselves for their reversal of fortune and profess admiration for the Japanese, they also believe that the Japanese and others are getting ahead through unfair economic practices. As a consequence, they are demanding that their government become less assertive in protecting others and more assertive in protecting the United States, especially its economic interests.

Both the will and the capacity of the nation to undertake new commitments, even ones embedded in multinational arrangements, will diminish sharply if the U.S. economy stagnates during the next five years. There is thus some urgency to move ahead in laying the foundations of a new enlightened foreign policy while the public will still support it. But there is even greater urgency to address the internal crisis of the United States.

Unless the nation embarks upon a comprehensive program of domestic renewal, the United States within a few years could become so deeply mired in its own troubles that its politics will turn even more embittered, xenophobic and inward. The specter of neo-isolationism that raised its head in late 1991 will then be but a precursor of worse to come, as reluctance to act as a leader turns into outright refusal, and international politics becomes a bare-knuckled brawl.