...or should Americans stop shouting about being the greatest and become great again?

Sorry, Texas! Americans have lost their claim to being the tallest country on Earth. According to John Komlos, of the University of Munich (assuming you can trust those Germans), the Dutch are now about two inches taller than your average American. Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago states, "It's a puzzle to which we really don't have a good answer". In the absence of reliable scientific data, isitjustme would like to trot out a few hypotheses. We began to shrink on the world stage about the time that George W. Bush became president. Laugh if you will but fact are facts. The first thing Mr. Bush did was to withdraw America from participation in the Kyoto Accords. The entire world was grappling with runaway energy use and climate change and the biggest pig at the trough decided to opt out.I'm sure that the president's history with the oil industry and his family's sleeping with the Saudis played no part in his decision. Since then the administration has focused all of its energy on forcing allies and enemies alike to bend to our will. Why strive for consensus when you can use force? Why elicit support for policies when you can just shove them down everyone's throat? All of that bullying works for a while but sooner or later someone pushes back. Europe isn't the paper tiger that it was after WWII and compared to China's army, our armed force is a rounding error. Besides, China doesn't have to fight us, they just have to call in the loans and our economy starts to look like David Crosby's liver. The Bush administration has been singing the same song for six+ years; we know best and the rest of the world is stupid. Meanwhile the rest of the world is laughing up their sleeves at our flailing around in Iraq. It will take the next president years to restore American prestige abroad. He/she will spend all of their time bouncing from capital to capital saying things like "Sorry about that arrogant jerk that was around here before. He's gone now". Face it America, we're living on our reputation. We can't make a car that anyone wants to buy. We profess to a desire to stop illegal immigration but we employ almost all of the 12 million illegals that are here. Our infant mortality rate ranks 41st, just ahead of Croatia. Life expectancy in the US is 77.9 years, 42nd in the world. We think our health care is so damn good but in an eight country comparison, we ran dead last in death from respiratory disease and diabetes. These stats are not likely to improve as the boomers age. The administration wants to take credit for the drug coverage bill but won't explain why the government was prohibited from negotiating the price of the meds. You can thank the Republican-controlled house for that one too. No wonder Americans are shorter. We 're carrying around the legacy of George W. Bush. That load would make anyone sag.