Keith Raffel

By KEITH RAFFEL

In 1992, Bill Clinton chose the Fleetwood Mac tune “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” as his campaign theme song.

So much seems quaint from those Clinton presidential years — a shrinking national debt, gun control legislation, expanded health coverage for children and a family leave act. And since those days of yore, too many of us Americans have stopped thinking about tomorrow.

From the earliest days of the Republic, looking to the future has been an integral part of the American dream. The Constitution’s preamble specifies it is being established to “secure the blessings of liberty” not only for ourselves but “our posterity.”

Lincoln speaks to us across the decades with his fervent plea “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” In his last speech as president, Ronald Reagan declared, “It’s our duty to protect (freedom) and expand it and pass it undiminished to those still unborn.”

How goes investing in the future these days? Let’s look at a few areas.

Nothing is more important to the future of the nation than our youth.

On July 4, Trump signed into law his ironically named Great Big Beautiful Bill, which cuts about a trillion dollars from spending on the Medicaid program that provides health insurance to 37 million children.

In addition, the law slashes food assistance now provided to the 13 million children through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. If we’re not providing health care and sustenance to coming generations, what kind of lives are we promising them?

Building out infrastructure takes time. Constructing a new high-speed railroad, a nationwide network of chargers for electric vehicles or a huge windmill farm takes years, if not decades. Trump’s regular pronouncements of “Infrastructure Week” during his first term produced nothing except fodder for late-night comedians. He didn’t have the patience to invest in the future then and doesn’t now, either. Instead, he throws his political capital behind immediate, unaffordable tax cuts which benefit the richest in today’s society while stealing from future generations.

Much of the glory of the United States can be attributed to its support for higher education.

One hundred fifty years before the nation itself was established, its first university was founded by the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s legislature.

In the midst of the Civil War, the Morrill Act provided federal backing for land-grant colleges that came to include such top-flight institutions as the University of Illinois, Penn State, the University of Maryland, Virginia Tech, the University of Minnesota, Kansas State, North Dakota State and dozens more.

The results of governmental investment in higher education are clear. A 2018 article in the Journal of Human Capital shows the Morrill Act was a major factor in establishing American economic leadership. Today, the UK’s Times Higher Education Supplement ranks 16 American universities in the top 25 worldwide.

The Trump administration cannot be looking to the future when Secretary of Education Linda McMahon vows to withhold federal funding from universities that don’t embrace administration policies. Shutting off funding for university research into cancer cures or tuberculosis vaccines won’t affect lives this year or next, but hundreds of thousands will die in coming decades.

McMahon is encouraging American students to reconsider the value of four-year college degrees. In a 2021 speech, now-Vice President JD Vance — a graduate of Ohio State, a land grant college — declared, “We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.” Where does Vance think progress will come from in medicine and technology? Who does he think will teach those with the potential to become novelists, philosophers or historians?

Even though the year 2024 was the hottest on record, the Trump administration wants to make America great again by turning the clock back to the years of belching smokestacks and auto exhaust pipes. Dr. Friederike Otto of London’s Imperial College believes about 1,500 people in a European heat wave this summer “would not have died if it would not have been for our burning of oil, coal and gas in the last century.” The World Health Organization estimates about 5 million deaths from 2030-50 will be attributable to climate change. And the Trump administration’s response?

A proposed ruling rescinds the finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. What’s the reaction of those who will be affected by climate change in the decades to come? Dr. Lise Van Susteren, a psychiatrist who specializes in the physical and mental health effects of climate disruption, told me, “Nothing makes young adults feel more betrayed than when politicians know there is a problem and do nothing about it.”

The Trump administration, Congress and the Supreme Court all seem to weigh the right to carry military assault weapons more heavily than the need to protect children from school shootings. Candidate Trump said people needed to “get over” an Iowa school shooting that left a sixth grader dead. Candidate Vance suggested school shootings are a “fact of life.” On the campaign trail, Trump promised members of the National Rifle Association that “no one will lay a finger on your firearms.”

The British might look back nostalgically to a time when they ruled over almost a quarter of the world’s population. Russian President Vladimir Putin bemoans the dissolution of the Soviet empire as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would like nothing better than to take back the lands of the Ottoman Empire “in the Mediterranean Sea, in the Aegean Sea and in the Black Sea.”

Like the British, Russians and Turks, the believers in Trump’s Make America Great Again movement look back to past glory, not forward to a better world. They seem to believe that to make America great, the country needs to return to a time of less educational opportunity, more pollution, unchecked gun deaths, inadequate medical coverage, poorer nutrition and shorter lifespans.

In response, I’d quote the words of Fleetwood Mac warning that “yesterday’s gone” and that tomorrow “will soon be here.”

A renaissance man, Keith Raffel has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started a successful internet software company and written five novels, which you can check out at keithraffel.com. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. To find out more about Raffel and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com. Copyright 2025 Keith Raffel and distributed by Creators.com.