In The Washington Post, op-ed columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. comments on a recent interview of Vice President Biden in which he defended the stimulus package and commented on fears of American decline. President Obama, in his first “State of the Union” address, had a strong ‘America-as-number-one’ theme; Biden not only echoed that theme but smashed critics who stated that America’s strongest days may be behind it.

This response has brought to life what may be a hidden issue in the upcoming midterm elections: the issue of how to ensure America continues to assert it’s global influence in the 21st-century. Here is where Republicans and Democrats see their greatest divergence on how to achieve that end. Republicans see it as an issue of ensuring American military might, while believing the only way to grow the economy is through tax cuts. Democrats, on the other hand, believe that the economy is where American power lies, and that the government has a vital role to play on setting up “the next generation of growth.”

“From me you’re going to hear more,” he replied emphatically. “I want to tell you something, because if we cede the ground to those who suggest that — I don’t mean foreigners, I mean domestic critics — that somehow, we are destined to fulfill [historian Paul] Kennedy’s prophecy that we are going to be a great nation that has failed because we lost control of our economy and overextended, then we might as well throw it in now, for God’s sake. I mean it’s ridiculous.”

On he went: “Give me a break. So many people have bet on our demise that it absolutely drives me crazy. . . . There’s sort of an attitude that is both politically directed by our Republican friends but also believed by a fair number of people that we just can’t make this transition in the 21st century.

“We will continue to be the most significant and dominant influence in the world as long as our economy is strong, growing and responsive to 21st-century needs. And they relate to education, they relate to energy, and they relate to health care.”

Biden, more self-aware than people give him credit for, realized what he had just done. “I’ve sort of gotten off the Recovery Act,” he said with a rueful smile.

Yet by the end of the interview, I realized he had bumped into the hidden political issue of the 2010 elections. Beneath the predictable back-and-forth between Obama and his Republican adversaries over government spending lies a substantively important difference over how the United States can maintain its global leadership.

President Obama’s “State of the Union” speech didn’t mention one word about the military when he talked about retaining America’s global leadership: he focused on education, human rights…the public sphere of domestic policy. This has re-framed the debate on what many consider to be frivilous spending in Washington; what was once spending is now patriotism, playing into the “America is number one” banner which the Obama administration seems to be lining up behind.

Photo (via Lycoming College)