 Now, he says, is not a back-patting moment, though. American confidence in vital government institutions, the military, the judiciary, the electoral system ranks lowest among the world's rich nations. And satisfaction with the way our democracy is working is the weakest it has been in the four decades that Gallup has tracked it. The coming presidential election, he writes, feels more existential than exceptional, as did the one before it and, of course, the one before that.