They have been a staple of American culture for more than four years now. We have all seen those bright red ballcaps with the four powerful words at the center of Donald Trump’s message, “Make America Great Again.”

Those hats and similar signage will be much in evidence over the coming few nights as Republicans conduct their virtual convention. The Trump campaign’s plan was to evolve the reelection message to “Keep American Great Again.” But any notion of “keeping” or “maintaining” lost all efficacy in the current setting.

Since this is Trump’s big moment (even sans a stadium of adoring, hat-wearing supporters) and the GOP’s week to right a sinking ship, let us take stock of how America is doing on that whole greatness thing.

The MAGA slogan is itself a throwback, a harkening to some real or imagined yesteryear when all was right. It would be helpful if those peddling such evocative notions would provide an historical reference point.

Along the lines of “Make America Great Again – like it was in the Roaring Twenties.” True, that decade now a hundred years in the rearview mirror was a period of economic prosperity to go along with advances in fashion and art. But before we get too nostalgic, we might recall that communism and fascism were on the international march and the Ku Klux Klan was flexing its muscle in many parts of America. On top of the fact that telephone systems were in their infancy and air conditioning of homes and offices was still 30 years in the future. Ditto for a polio vaccine. And, minor point, the decade ended with the great stock market crash of 1929.

Or is the reference to the 1950s, another time of major economic growth and with the fruits of that expansion far more widespread? Good times all around, right? Unless you found yourself in Joe McCarthy’s sights or fighting along the 38th Parallel in Korea or trying to integrate Little Rock Central High School.

Or some might yearn for the placid 1990s with the major advances in individual technology and the onset of a truly global economy. Even if it is hard to imagine a lot of confirmed Trumpsters feeling all warm and fuzzy about a decade for which Bill Clinton was the dominant political figure. Concurrent with that economic boom and the giant exhale after the sudden disappearance of the Soviet threat, homegrown and Islamic terrorism were on the rise, gays continued to live in shadows while AIDS still ravaged their communities, and both a blue dress and the illusion of Oval Office majesty were badly stained.

Appeals to reclaim the glories or ease of some past era are often based more in lore than in historic reality. The supposed good-old-days were usually not nearly or unequivocally or universally as good as we wistfully pretend.

So where is America today on that greatness scale? What is the country’s trajectory?

The stock market under Trump boomed and has now reclaimed those heights. That is surely one metric. But it is only one measure and of disproportionate importance, meaningful to those higher on the ladder and of far less significance to those left behind.

Upward mobility, a core American tenet, is at a low ebb and wealth disparity, already dangerously pronounced, continues to tick up.

Our health-care system while delivering leading-edge medical care in particularly difficult and complex cases leaves far too many behind and consumes a heavy, escalating, out-of-whack share of national wealth.

Life expectancy in the U.S. lags other advanced nations and is actually declining among some populations. Our infant mortality statistics are in the bottom ranks of the world’s leading countries. And those statistics pre-date COVID.

On that topic, does anyone truly, seriously, credibly assert that the federal response to the coronavirus was what it should have been? Or that the consequent calamity was unavoidable? Has this public health crisis displayed American greatness or decline?

The opioid catastrophe continues to destroy countless lives and communities. The epidemic of obesity has become an American trademark, and not a sign of eminence.

What of the condition of the roads in far too many states and localities? Or of the broader infrastructure crisis that has moved from a problem to a national embarrassment?

Unemployment currently approaches Depression levels. But even before this cataclysmic year, tens of millions of our fellow citizens were leading lives devoid of meaningful pursuit with a patchwork of low-paid jobs in place of any kind of career.

It has been a long time since our public schools consistently delivered outcomes required of a global leader. The tragedy of homelessness is more and more a fact of life with no major city having shown a working, effective response. Justice is all too often a hit-or-miss proposition and far too many black men find their way into a jail cell.

Is American influence in the world at a high point or underwater? How are the processes and agencies of government functioning? When was the last time Congress even passed an annual budget, a minimal expectation of government if ever there was one? Money might be cheap at the moment. But do great nations intent on maintaining that distinction bank on minimal interest rates in perpetuity and run multi-trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see?

For that matter, how is the Postal Service doing at the most basic function of delivering mail in a reliable, timely, efficient manner?

As a capstone, is what passes for political discourse in America a sign of a country of high standing headed in the right direction?

The questions abound; the litany could go on. This election will be a referendum on Donald Trump’s record of producing or safeguarding — or even reclaiming — American greatness. It is his trademark slogan.

If the test is the health of our institutions or the public morale, that verdict is likely to be harsh.