Perhaps the greatest gift of my journalistic life has been to have a seat in the stalls for many of the most extraordinary moments in modern American history: the Reagan Revolution, the Bush interregnum, the Clinton years, 9/11 and the lead-up to war in Iraq, the victory of Barack Obama and the defeat of Hillary Clinton. As I was writing this book, however, and the coronavirus crowded in on us in New York, I confess to wanting to escape. The Covid-19 crisis became a coda to the book I wish we all could have avoided. It made me yearn even more for the America I fell in love with as a teenager during that carefree Californian summer.
The idea for When America Stopped Being Great came from an essay I wrote for the BBC, which began with that first westward journey. Early one Friday evening, I started putting pen to paper on the Acela Express as it pulled out of Union Station in Washington, and was still writing when the sun rose in New York on Saturday morning. Much to my surprise, this bundle of thoughts and reminiscences became something of a viral sensation, so my thanks to the more than three million people who read that essay and unwittingly helped bring this book into existence.
Our digital team in Washington, led by Tom Geoghegan, Ben Bevington and Jude Sheerin, has always promoted my writing, and always found a home for the longest of long reads. Thanks as well to Finlo Rohrer in London, who came up with the headline for that piece, which I purloined for the title of this book.
My BBC boss in Washington, Paul Danahar, a dear friend since our days covering the 9/11 beat in South Asia, has always been a wise and brave editor. He casts a thoughtful eye over almost every word I write, and defends us to the hilt. The BBC’s former foreign editor Jon Williams posted me to New York in the first place, and then, happily, became our neighbour in Brooklyn. Thanks as well to my friend Andrew Roy, the BBC’s present foreign editor and former Washington bureau chief from the Clinton years, and the BBC’s head of newsgathering Jonathan Munro for letting me see how the Trump years played out.
My New York producers, Nada Tawfik, Chris Gibson, Tony Brown, Lynsea Garrison and Ashley Semler have been a joy. My shooter Andrew ‘Sarge’ Herbert is an Aussie legend. My friend Andrew Blum filmed that first interview with Donald Trump. My thanks, as well, to our producers and camera crews in Washington and beyond. The lovely Tara Neil, Kate Farrell, Sarah Svoboda, John Landy, Ian Druce, Ron Skeans, Pete Murtaugh, Chuck Tayman, James Cooke, Maxine Collins, Maria Byrne, Mat Morrison, Aiden Johnson, Gringo Wotshela, Ed Habershon, Kat Stefanie, Samantha Granville, Harry Low, Brajesh Upadhyay, Lindle Markwell, Aiden Johnson, Sam Beattie, Morgan Gisholt Minard, Bill McKenna, Allen McGreevy, Joni Mazer Field, Jonathan Csapo and Rozalia Hristova. Much of the book was discussed over various dinners in the home of my good friends Katty Kay and Tom Carver. Our office manager John McPherson has long been a BBC treasure.
My correspondent colleagues Jon Sopel, Barbara Plett Usher, James Cook, Anthony Zurcher, Aleem Maqbool, Gary O’Donoghue, Laura Bicker, Chris Buckler, David Willis, Laura Trevelyan and Jane O’Brien have been wonderful fellow travellers. Thanks, as well, to our happy band in the BBC New York bureau: Michelle Fleury, Samira Hussain, John Mervin, Natalie Sherman, Bahman Kalbasi, Zoe Thomas, James Cooke and Tom Brook.
I have also benefited from the work of a squadron of historians and political reporters who have covered or written about the last six presidencies with such distinction, foremost amongst them Lou Cannon, H. W. Brands, Gil Troy, Jon Meacham, John Harris, Joe Klein, Hendrik Hertzberg, Jean Edward Smith, E. J. Dionne, Jonathan Alter and Steve Kornacki.
The biggest treat of writing this book was to reconnect with the professor who examined my doctoral thesis all those years ago, my fellow Bristolian Tony Badger, the former Paul Mellon Professor of American History at Cambridge University and one of the nicest men in British academia. Our transatlantic email exchanges took on the feel of a fun evening in one of those cosy Cambridge pubs where the conversation could have extended way beyond closing time. Tony was generous with his insights, anecdotes and encyclopaedic knowledge. Richard Partington, the senior tutor at Churchill College, who has done so much to encourage kids from similar backgrounds to me to feel that Cambridge is their academic home, was also supportive.
For his thoughts on the manuscript, I am indebted to Allan Little, the BBC’s poet laureate of news. Allan, who has always been supportive of my long-form writing, is the kind of correspondent we all want to emulate. The BBC’s Ben Wright, another of our finest wordsmiths and a friend since the George W. Bush days, popped up in New York at just the right time with his discerning eye and generous encouragement. I owe an enormous debt to Malcolm Balen, the BBC tsar who checks every word we prepare for outside consumption. It is to his great credit that Malcolm wields his blue pencil so lightly and so deftly. I am thankful for his wise counsel and encouraging words.
It was also my good fortune to work with Jamie Birkett at Bloomsbury, who was not just a great advocate for the book but such a talented and helpful editor. In these socially distanced times, we quickly developed a close working relationship, even though it was only after the hardback edition was published that we finally came face-to-face. The Bloomsbury team was exemplary: Jude Drake in publicity, Lizzy Ewer and Rosie Parnham in marketing, Sutchinda Thompson, who designed such a striking cover, Rayshma Arjune, who looked after publicity on this side of the Atlantic, Matthew Taylor who was such a diligent copyeditor and Sarah Jones, who project edited the paperback edition.
For the Australian edition, I am grateful to the indefatigable Nikki Christer at Penguin Random House, who once again brought a book into existence based on what was essentially a one-line pitch. It was a pleasure to work with the editor Patrick Mangan, a fellow Pom, and my tireless publicist Jessica Malpass.
Gordon Wise, my agent in London, deserves a special word of thanks, for believing in this book from the outset and for pushing so strongly for a pre-history of the Trump presidency that took a step back from the frenzied here and now. Pippa Masson, his colleague from Curtis Brown in Sydney, is always a joy to work with.
My dear mum and dad, Janet and Colin Bryant, have always encouraged my American travels, even though it has meant me living most of my adult life beyond British shores.
Words of thanks to my children, Billy and Wren, double as an apology: for the time I spent reading history books on holiday when I should have been splashing around in the pool; for allowing Netflix to do some of my early morning weekend parenting so I could sit at my laptop. Though they are usually in the same room when I write, many are the times when I have been absent. Still, I have watched them blossom into charismatic little New Yorkers, with all the spirit, imagination, open-mindedness and internationalism that entails. Beautiful Honor, the calmest of babies, has been the most joyous of distractions.
The final and most heartfelt words of appreciation go to my wife Fleur, who agreed to leave behind her beloved Australian homeland in 2013 so I could pursue my latest American dream. Not for the first time, completing a book meant burning too much midnight oil. Not for the first time, some of my early deadlines coincided with a due date. No one, though, has encouraged my writing more than Fleur, and done more in a loving and practical way to help make it happen. For years to come we will talk about the months spent in lockdown during New York’s coronavirus outbreak, and reflect on how the experience brought us even closer together as a couple and as a family. Forever we will remember the spring and summer of 2020, mindful of those who lost their lives and thankful for the magic of new life.