This year's celebration of the Fourth of July is amplified by the sesquicentennial of the Union victory at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. The holiday will no doubt serve up the requisite dose of patriotic feeling, sentimentality and togetherness to convince us that we have exercised some civic virtue. But the vacation time spent with family and friends will mostly serve to remind us that we are exhausted.
Exhaustion is the national refrain. When everyone from a basketball coach to a Cabinet member retires from view, we are told how exhausted each is and discover a public echo of our own private feeling.
One of the most recent — and certainly among the most speculated about — confessions of this kind came from Hillary Clinton, who told the New York Times, "I would like to see whether I can get untired." I have no doubt that Clinton — fabled for her work ethic and ambition to enact change — is tired. How could she not be? But Clinton's claim that she craves the "ordinary" after two decades of the extraordinary emphasizes something beyond the energy required to live a public life today.
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