In 1976, America turned 200, and the country threw itself a party worth remembering. Tall ships sailed into New York Harbor, fireworks lit up the skies from the big cities to the smallest towns, and people hung flags on their porches and meant it.
Picture the country that summer. Gerald Ford was in the White House, having taken the oath two years earlier when Richard Nixon resigned. Families gathered around the television for "All in the Family" and "Happy Days," and the radio was all disco and Wings.
On the Fourth itself, much of the country tuned to the same channel, where Walter Cronkite anchored an all-day CBS broadcast called "In Celebration of Us," carrying viewers from one celebration to the next from morning until long after dark. Between the programs ran Coca-Cola's "Look Up America" ads, a sunny, flag-waving campaign built to lift the spirits of a nation that had spent a decade getting kicked in the backside.
Ohio had a quiet claim on the celebration. The "Spirit of '76," that famous image of the three musicians marching with fife and drum, came from the brush of Archibald Willard, a painter who grew up in Wellington, Ohio. That summer, his work turned up on everything from postage stamps to dinner plates.
That is what makes the year remarkable. The country was badly bruised. A president had been driven from office by the Watergate scandal, the Vietnam War had ended in humiliation, and families were worn down by gas lines and runaway inflation. People had every reason to be angry at their government and each other.
The year was no lost Eden of agreement. Busing battles raged, Vietnam's wounds were still open, and a bitter election was only months off. But for one summer, nobody owned the flag, and waving it didn't mark you as anybody's partisan. Corporate giant Coca-Cola bet its advertising budget on the hunch that the country wanted to feel good about itself again, and the bet paid off.
Fifty years later, the country is split into red and blue, into camps that no longer trust one another or even watch the same news. There is no Cronkite, no single voice to make sense of the day. Even the nation's flag has become something people argue over.
To be frank, that is the real distance between 1976 and 2026. The hard times look familiar. What has changed is that we have stopped believing the small things that unite us outweigh the loud things that divide us. Our parents and grandparents were not naive — they had just watched their own institutions stumble. But they understood that a country is more than its arguments.
The tall ships will sail again this summer. The only question worth asking is whether we will stand on the shore together to watch them or argue about who the day belongs to.
Questions, comments and letters to the editor are welcome. Email [email protected].