Whoever wins the presidential election on November 5 will face an important task: overseeing America’s 250th birthday party.
That’s right, the good old United States is turning 250 in 2026. Nearly two-and-a-half centuries ago, Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence. On July 4, 1776, this founding document was adopted unanimously by the Second Continental Congress, thereby creating the U.S.A. as we know it (and as we’ve mythologized it).
Assuming the country lasts until July 4, 2026, we are going to have one of two people in charge: a hateful 80-year-old teetotaler who is already in obvious mental decline, or a 61-year-old woman who has made joy a focal part of her presidential campaign and chugged a Miller High Life on stage with Stephen Colbert. I know who I think would make a better party planner, but hey, maybe some of you have had way more fun mingling with racist octogenarians than I have.
Now, America has had an official Semiquincentennial Commission (I promise I will use that dumb-ass word only one more time) since 2016. For a couple reasons, I don’t think the members of that group are really going to have a whole lot of sway over whatever the presiding president ultimately wants to do to celebrate.
Had you ever heard of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission before this very moment? Didn’t think so. If a large group of national-level politicians, eggheads, and other theoretically influential people has been doing whatever it is they’ve been doing for eight years without even pretty informed members of the public hearing about it, they’re either working at Area 51 or aren’t wielding great power to exciting effect.
Let’s also look at a couple of the member names. Oh, Anthony Kennedy, an 88-year-old former Supreme Court justice who retired so that Trump could replace him with Brett Kavanaugh and get Roe v. Wade overturned; I don’t know about you, but someone who is nearly 90 whose ultimate legacy is making sure thousands of women are going to forcibly carry unwanted pregnancies to term or die in the attempt does not exactly scream “partier of the century” to me.
It’s a bipartisan commission though, so I won’t pick only on conservatives. Ah, here we are, I think I see one of these deep-state liberals I’ve heard so much about … wait, what the f*ck, Merrick Garland? The guy who got cucked out of a Supreme Court seat and then slow-walked the several still-pending criminal cases through which he could have actually seen something done about it? Look, I feel bad for Garland, but “pitiful” is not how one would typically describe the organizer of an epic party for the ages.
Has anyone heard from Tucker Max lately? Maybe we can wheel him out of cryogenic storage or whatever and see if he has one last party in him.
My bold prediction is that the official 250th birthday party planning committee is not going to knock the socks off of the average American. Either way, we’ll get some museum events and mandatory diversity efforts — pleasing to history buffs like me, I suppose, though likely to flop with the masses. Beyond that, I bet a lot of directional velocity will come from the top based on whoever wins this presidential election.
We already got a glimpse into Trump’s plan for a massive national celebration: a big missile parade in the style of weak third-world dictatorships trying to look strong that he wasn’t previously even able to pull off because he eventually lost interest (also the Pentagon found a gaudy display of military hardware to be both costly and counterproductive to military aims). Harris hasn’t been in the top seat at the White House like Trump has, so her idea of a truly patriotic commemorative event remains more of a mystery, but there is little doubt that it would incorporate the military in a more respectful and traditionally American fashion.
America’s 250th birthday party is not the most important issue in this election. Still, symbolism matters, stories matter, and this celebration will be kind of a big deal. It could be a huge economic success that brings joy and a sense of national pride to millions as we celebrate how far we’ve all come together. Or it could be a divisive train wreck that needlessly flushes millions of tax dollars down the tubes in order to stroke one man’s ego. Make the right choice in November.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at [email protected].
