Our economy was basically good during the Clinton administration. The federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 1997 was just $22.6 billion, the lowest it had been since Gerald Ford was president. That meant the federal government was able to pay its bills with minimal borrowing.

But there were storm warnings on the horizon. Federal spending was rapidly rising, and it was obvious that Big Government was getting bigger by the day.

Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in December 1993. The trade pact took effect almost immediately, on January 1 of the following year. True to Ross Perot’s prediction, “that great sucking noise” was the sound of American jobs being lost to workers in other countries—and that was long before extensive outsourcing of American jobs became a common practice of major concern.

There were many other indications that our country was getting into serious trouble. In response, in December 1997 I started writing a book titled “Is America Dying?”. However, before I could make much progress on the manuscript, I was diagnosed with lung cancer. My priorities suddenly changed. I was unable to finish writing the book at that time, and when I had recovered from surgery and once again had the time to research and write, other projects in my life had taken precedence.

In retrospect, what I wrote ten years ago shows great prescience. If anything, my evaluations were much too conservative. Today our country is facing situations far more precarious than the ones that were becoming obvious just a decade ago.

Much has happened during the past ten years: The enormity of 9/11; The Iraq war; the ludicrous debacle of the George W. Bush presidency; the expansion of imports, in particular from China; and the huge increase in our country’s foreign trade deficit.

America is now in the throes of an economic meltdown, but that is only one facet of our nation’s multiplicity of problems that Barack Obama will have to address immediately upon taking office.

Rather than complete a book that would be obsolete by the time it came off the press, I’ve decided to discourse our nation’s problems online in articles written for THE COWLES REPORT.

But first, here is the introduction to America is Dying, as I wrote it in early 1998:

Is the United States of America dying?

At the end of World War II, no one could deny that the United States was the most powerful and technologically advanced nation that had ever taken root on the planet Earth; a nation victorious in battle, rich with natural resources, rife with opportunity, ripe with the spirit of its citizens, and righteous with a Constitution and Bill of Rights that promised liberty and justice for all—though that promise had yet to reach full fruition.

Now, less than fifty years later, our once-great country approaches the 21st century in a dismally terminal condition. Multiple cancers promulgated by bungling bureaucrats, self-serving political opportunists, sob sisters and bleeding-heart liberals, fanatic reactionaries, Bible-thumping fundamentalists, and bigots and hatemongers of every color and stripe have metastasized to invade and infect and decay and destroy.

Unless a miracle cure—a political penicillin—can be developed for our national illness, and soon, it will be only a matter of time before the United States fails. Perhaps with a whimper, perhaps with a bang. The handwriting is unmistakably on the wall.

Impossible, you say? A ridiculous prediction? An inane assumption? Let me caution you not to scoff and dismiss my studied prognosis summarily nor deceive yourself with naive disbelief. Too much is at stake. Too much depends on all Americans understanding what’s gone wrong in our country and doing everything possible to take immediate corrective action.

Governments and human beings share many attributes. Both experience the tumultuous pangs of birth. As they grow, some people and nations struggle for a meager existence while others, more fortunate, blossom forth and flourish and prosper. Like human beings, some nations lead long, productive lives, while others succumb in relative infancy. Some are killed violently, by chance or intent. Without exception, sooner or later the remainder will wither and die. The only uncertainty is the timing.

Compare a world map of today with one of just fifty or sixty years ago and you’ll quickly discover hundreds of changes—changes brought about because governments have failed. But, nature abhors a vacuum. If a land and its inhabitants are not absorbed by a neighbor or former rival, a new nation or nations, Phoenix-like, will arise from the ashes of the old.