Opinion: US rankings not as high as I might have expected

Often I’ve said that my dad wasn’t the “greatest” man I’ve ever known, but he was the “best” man I’ve known. In my book, that puts Dad over Bill Clinton any day.

Let’s apply that to nations. The U.S. is the greatest nation on earth, as long as you equate greatness with wealth and power. But “best” we are not.

Nearly a year ago, U.S. News & World Report put out its seventh annual “Best Countries Rankings” and we weren’t even in the top three. But at least we moved up from the previous year.

Surprisingly (or not), the U.S. was fourth among the “best” nations on earth, behind our neighbor to the north, another nation we helped rebuild and one that’s known for its neutrality; Canada came in third, and Germany second, followed by Switzerland at the top of the list last year.

Rounding out the top 10 were Sweden in fifth, followed (in order) by Japan, Australia, United Kingdom, France and Denmark.

The report compared 76 nations using a set of 73 country “attributes,” which the magazine explained as “terms that can be used to describe a country and that are also relevant to the success of a modern nation.” Working with the global marketing company WPP and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, a survey of 17,000 people worldwide gathered data that were then broken down into 10 subgroups: adventure, agility, cultural influence, entrepreneurship, heritage, movers, open for business, power, social purpose and quality of life.

Personally, I was surprised with where the U.S. falls in some of those categories. I thought we’d be way up there in “adventure” and “open for business” but we didn’t even make the top 10 in those, or in most of the others as well.

We were first, however, in “power” and “agility,” second in “entrepreneurship” and third in “cultural influence” — none of which surprises me. Our military and economic power is unmatched, and our agility shows in our ability to adapt and still grow.

We’re also a nation of entrepreneurs, although Germany outshined us in that category this time around.

As for our cultural influence around the world, I’m only surprised we’re not first; Italy won the top spot in that category, with — even more surprisingly, at least for me — France in number two. Maybe I need to pay more attention to fashion.

That we’re 20th in “heritage” is disappointing, while being 53rd in “open for business” is, well, perplexing. And being 21stin “quality of life” is downright depressing.

Of course, at a personal level, deciding what is “best” is altogether biased and subjective. For example: I’ve only visited a handful of other nations, so I’m far from an expert, but I happen to know the U.S. is, in fact, the best in the world — for me.

U.S. News & World Report — now an online magazine only, with all sorts of useful and interesting lists and how-to reports — put its “best countries” rankings out last September, so maybe its eighth annual report is just around the corner. Here’s hoping that this year the U.S. makes it into the top three.

But just so you know, that comes from my patriotism (in a home-team competitive sort of way). A nationalist might try to skew the results, perhaps by claiming the results were rigged — to which I say, baseless nonsense. And I’m sure Dad would agree.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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