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Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.

An economically confident America has - since becoming a world power at the start of the 20th century - tended toward global engagement. It is during times of economic stress (1930s, 1970s) that America has become more withdrawn.

From a distance, the American political system is a remarkable success. We have accomplished the peaceful transfer of power for more than two hundred years, and that's unmatched by any civilization in human history. Up close, our political system still has all the ugliness and bad actors that you might suspect.

There are two factors in American politics that may seem strange to Europeans: race and religion.

Americans are nervous; Americans are restless; and what troubles me the most is that Americans are uncharacteristically pessimistic.

Just six years into the 21st century, one can say this is not shaping up to be anything like an American century. Rather, the U.S. seems much more likely to be faced with a very different kind of future: how to manage its own imperial decline.

What makes me worry today is the alarming decline in the trust in democratic institutions - political parties, Parliaments, political leaders. Less and less people are going to the polls in most advanced democracies.

It's fashionable in some circles to be pessimistic about America, about conservative solutions, about the Republican Party. I utterly reject that pessimism.

We will either bring on another American century, or we are doomed to witness America's decline.