Just in time for the fireworks, Gallup reports that the share of Americans that are “extremely proud” of America is down to 54%. It was 58% when America elected its First Black President (H/T PJMedia).

So what went wrong? Really, what's amazing is that extreme pride in America remains as high as 54%.

That's why I want a president who's a rootin' tootin' unashamed booster of America and Americanism. Someone like the Irish-American, George M. Cohan, the Yankee Doodle Dandy supposedly born on the Fourth of July. Or the Jewish-American Irving Berlin, author of  “God Bless America.”

The program of a president born on the Fourth of July would boil down to this:

1. America is the best country in the world.
2. The American people are the best people in the world.
3. America must have the best economy in the world.

In other words, the nation state is a Good Thing. A national demos is a Good Thing. A thriving economy, open to talents, is a Good Thing.

This is also to say that the liberal agenda of global governance, identity politics and Keynesian, egalitarian economics is a Bad Thing.

The first thing for the Republican candidates for president in 2016 to say, again and again, is that America is the best country in the world.

Oh sure, we stole it from the Indians. But every nation is built upon conquest. Oh sure, we were hypocrites back then talking about freedom when the leaders of the country were mostly slave owners. But then we fought a civil war to end slavery.

Anyway, I didn't say that America is the only perfect country in the world. I just said it was the best. And the best evidence that this is true is that liberals like President Obama deny it: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” How's that Greek exceptionalism doing, Mr. President?

The second thing for the Republican candidates for president to say, again and again, is that the American people are the best people in the world. Liberals won't say that because their politics requires half of Americans to be racist, sexist, or homophobic or all three. They can't win unless they divide us by race and class and sex.

But we have seen what real Americans do, without thinking, to prove they are the best people in the world. We saw it in Charleston, South Carolina, when that city refused to divide in righteous fury when an evil young man tried to start a race war. Maybe the fact that South Carolina recently elected a black man as a Republican United States Senator has something to do with that.

The third thing for the Republican candidates for president to say, again and again, is that America must have the best economy in the world.

This is not to call for an orgy of materialism. It is just to say that if ordinary people are to prosper, if young people are to find jobs and launch careers and marry and buy homes and have children, if old people are to retire in dignity, if immigrants are to find a place in America without driving wages down for other Americans, then the economy must thrive.

We know what it takes for the economy to thrive. It takes the ruling class and its government, its supporters, its donors, its bureaucrats, its subsidies, its taxes, and its little-darling activists to get the heck out of the way. It takes sound money. It takes low tax rates. It takes limited regulations. It's really pretty easy to figure this out. Just about everything that the Obama administration has done has made things worse.

So yeah: Let's celebrate America, Americans, and the American Way, once again.

It is no shame to make like Yankee Doodle Dandies and celebrate a naïve faith in America. If Irish-American George M. Cohan and Jewish-American Irving Berlin could do it then so can today's Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, and African Americans. Go ahead, you guys. Dress up like like the guy playing Hamilton. It'll change your life!

It is no shame to celebrate all Americans as the best people in the world. That is how we transcend our divisions and celebrate ourselves as the world's greatest experiment.

And above all there is no shame in a robust, growing economy. We are not going to fry the planet.

Of course, everything said here is said better by Angelo Codevilla in his latest broadside against the Ruling Class.

But it all comes down to an America led by a President that walks and talks as though he were Born of the Fourth of July. Even if he wasn't.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also see his American Manifesto and get his Road to the Middle Class.