American declinism can suddenly overtake commentators who had previously taken a sanguine view of the country's prospects. Robert Kagan has noted, for example, that the pundit Fareed Zakaria, who in 2004 “described the United States as enjoying a 'comprehensive uni-polarity' unlike anything seen since Rome” had, by 2008, begun “writing about the 'post-American world' and 'the rise of the rest.'”[8]