Not really, although it might be terminology. I would call the attention span thing an organizational problem. I would call things like the national debt and tort reform structural problems.
Yup, that's a valid use of the terminology as well.
Guilty as charged. I would point out, though, that a global perspective isn't terribly valuable for a unique situation. The problems in the US are historically unique, if only for their magnitude. I would say the closest historical parallel is Classic Rome. If you'll grant me that "the world was quite a bit smaller back then" (in other words, largely ignore Asian civilization of the time and focus on Europe) and perhaps a bit of American arrogance, I would say the parallel holds up pretty well. Dominant military power, dominant economy of the world, nearly all-encompassing sphere of influence, decadent consumer populace, cultural and technological leadership, marked internal division of wealth and power (citizens versus slaves), well-developed national arrogance. Seems like a fairly good fit, and that one didn't end so well, did it.
I really hate that parallel -- it's facile, emotionally laden, grandiose, and very misleading. The similarities are superficial or trivial, while the differences are structural. Specifically:
* Your laundry list fits just about any great power in decline, not just Rome. Britain pre-WW2, France pre-Revolution, the Seleucid empire before Mithradates II, the Khalifate before the Turks, you name it.
* Not all of those declines ended in collapse. Rome, for example, reformed itself on multiple occasions before they finally went down. Consider Marius and Sulla, the Punic wars, the civil wars and the end of the Republic with the subsequent rise of the Empire, and, if you will, the little detail that Eastern Rome picked up the pieces after the Dark Ages and continued merrily for another millennium as Byzantium -- even as it abandoned the ecologically, economically, and demographically ruined Western parts of the empire.
* The time scale is all wrong. American ascendancy has lasted for barely three-quarters of a century; Roman ascendancy lasted 500 years (or more, depending on how you look at it).
And most importantly, the Rome parallel says nothing particularly meaningful about the causes of the decline, nor about what could be done to reverse it -- that is, nothing more meaningful than most other, similar periods of history. Specifically, the causes of the collapse of Western Rome are in many very important respects completely unlike the causes of the American decline:
* The population movements that put constant barbarian pressure on the empire. (No, Mexicans or Al Qaeda don't count. Really.)
* The top-to-bottom militarization of society. The only way to make a career in late Rome was through the legions -- and the only way to get to power was at the point of the gladius. If you want to look for parallels, political life in late Rome looked a lot like political life in any of the tin-pot little countries with a coup or two every year.
* Ecological destruction. By late antiquity, Rome had barbered off pretty much all the forests usable for construction and shipbuilding that it could reach; fields were over-farmed and crops were failing regularly. (And no, the loss of a part of the American industrial base overseas doesn't count.)
* Geography. Rome was bang in the middle of everything, which was both a source of its power (Italy is a great base to expand from) and a source of its downfall (no matter how far they expanded, they had hostiles just over the border).
There are much more meaningful parallels around, if you're interested in looking for them. Most of them just aren't as sexy as Rome. Some of them are even around now -- the American scale isn't as unique in the world as you appear to think.
