Compare the mood of America’s 250th anniversary with its 200th anniversary in 1976

This article originally appeared on PolitiFact.

A country in a sour mood. High inflation and gasoline prices. A culture war is raging. A president with declining approval ratings.

America at 250? In fact, America is in 200 and 250.

As the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, a look back five decades to 1976 — the year of the nation’s bicentennial — reveals remarkable similarities to today.

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Richard Nixon replaced Donald Trump, Vietnam with Iran, and Watergate for using the Justice Department to reward friends and punish enemies, and you can see a reasonable parallel between 1976 and 2026.

“The similarities are uncanny: international conflict, internal strife, political turmoil, partisan division, economic instability,” said Mark Stein, a historian at San Francisco State University.

As the 250th anniversary approaches, we asked a group of historians to describe their sense of the national mood during both celebrations, and how the celebrations were similar and different.

In 1976 and 2026, the United States was marking the anniversary amid “major crises of confidence about national values, vices and virtues, and about the past, present and future of national greatness,” Stein said.

The zeitgeist during the two periods differed in some respects, particularly in the degree of party polarization, which is generally considered much higher today.

How did the nation celebrate the bicentennial?

In recent weeks, several musical acts have withdrawn from the 250th anniversary concert series scheduled for the National Mall. The performers’ complaint that the event had become politicized was confirmed when Trump responded by saying he might hold a political rally instead.

Other 250th anniversary events, many organized by the Freedom 250 group with close ties to Trump, include a UFC event on the White House lawn and a religious event on the National Mall.

The top-down presidential approach is not entirely new to such celebrations; It is also how the bicentenary has developed.

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Planning began a decade earlier in 1966, with President Lyndon Johnson creating a bipartisan committee to organize the celebration. Johnson wanted to hold a World’s Fair, an echo of the 1876 centennial in Philadelphia. But within two years, Johnson was out of office.

When Nixon became president, he appointed “political friends and longtime supporters” to the commission, M. J. Rymza Pawlowska, an American University historian and author, wrote in an article about the bicentennial.

She wrote that critics said it was not long before Nixon was framing the bicentennial in ways that focused on himself and his 1972 campaign. Some said the commission was “corrupt and unworkable.” Others, including the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, said the efforts pay little attention to the history of racial and ethnic minorities. Alternative organizing committees for the bicentenary emerged.

Ultimately, the Nixon administration responded to criticism by changing course, beginning a hands-off process of distributing funds to local groups without strict federal mandates. The idea was to empower local communities to undertake historical projects that were meaningful to their communities.

While some activities were national in scope—including a tall ship parade, a reverse west-to-east wagon train and a July 4 fireworks display—the majority were very local. These projects have ranged from restoring a railroad station in Ogden, Utah, to preserving a historic one-room schoolhouse at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and the Seafood Heritage Trail in Biloxi, Mississippi.

A study by the General Accounting Office, the former name of Congress’ investigative arm, found “1,766 historical re-enactments, beauty pageants, tree plantings and an ‘old-time fiddlers’ contest,'” David Skinner, a former editor at the National Endowment for the Humanities, wrote for the Wall Street Journal. Popcorn to dry cleaning hangers and diaper bags.

The mood of historical discovery was evident in a range of activities and displays, from research into family origins to blockbuster TV movies such as the slavery epic Roots.

The way the bicentennial celebration has evolved — more than just one — fits the mood of the nation, Rimza Pawlowska told PolitiFact. Beginning in the 1960s, “an entire generation of people became concerned with their communities and self-determination, and so the celebration ended.”

Especially after Nixon resigned in 1974 and was succeeded by Gerald Ford, the presidential role became less triumphant and more humble.

Daniel Williams, an Ashland University historian, said Ford “focused on the founders and talked about America’s founding values, which was generally well received.” “He certainly hasn’t asserted himself.”

Trump’s approach is certainly different, historians said.

“Today, the carnival atmosphere of the cage fights on the White House lawn and the concert that everyone seems to be backing out of tells you all you need to know,” said James Robenalt, a lawyer and Watergate scholar. “There is no serious look at the nation or its complex history.”

Democrats, for their part, “fear that participating in any of these celebrations will be a kind of actual celebration of Trump,” said Vincent Cannato, a historian at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Was 1976 more optimistic than 2026?

In 1976, Americans were not necessarily optimistic; The general public was concerned about the economy and foreign policy, the divorce rate was rising rapidly, race and gender had become polarized, and political corruption seemed endemic. But there was a sense that the worst was over, Robenalt said, because after the dual test of Watergate and Vietnam, the barriers of democracy and justice stood.

The political rhetoric was soothing, not scathing. After taking office, Ford assured the nation that “our long national nightmare is over.” In his acceptance speech at the 1976 Democratic Convention, Jimmy Carter, who defeated Ford, said: “I’m telling you the best of our nation is still ahead.”

Historians say that while Trump often sows seeds of division, the public mood in 2026 does not stem entirely from him. Today, there is a more complex understanding of history—accelerated in part by bicentennial-era research—that includes diverse perspectives. One such viewpoint won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary—the 1619 Project, whose title refers to the year slavery began in what later became the United States.

The project, which a Pulitzer quote described as “sweeping” and “provocative,” said it aims to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the center of our national narrative.” This meant that it challenged the traditional framing of the American experience in 1776. Some prominent historians claimed that it made factual errors, and it sparked a heated, and at times ideologically charged, debate about what should constitute the dominant theme of America’s founding.

The intense debate of recent years contrasts with 1976, a period when incorporation was “less divisive,” said Kermit Roosevelt, a law professor and author at the University of Pennsylvania.

One of the ironies of the 2026 celebration, Rimza-Palowska said, is that many of its best offerings rely heavily on the infrastructure created for the 1976 bicentennial and now institutionalized — local history organizations, libraries, academic research centers and graduate scholarships.

“It is no coincidence that so many public history institutions and initiatives were founded in the mid-1970s; this is a result of the excitement and opportunities that celebration provides,” she wrote.