Many liberal journalists are afflicted with a variation of Bush Derangemenet Syndrome: they look, and find, everywhere signs of America's decline on the world stage.

The French have a term for these thinkers: declinologists. Of course, the French have reason to look about them and see decline. American leftists face a much tougher case to make, but that hasn't stopped them. The Boston Globe makes an absurd analogy meant to demonsrate American weakness: we have lost influence in Olympics.