By Doug Pinkham
Public Affairs Council President
October 26, 2010
Good morning! I'm calling because you've been selected to participate in a nationwide poll.
Hmmm. . . I've got lots to do, but I never get calls from pollsters. And for someone interested in politics and public opinion, this could be interesting.
"How long will it take?"
About 15 minutes.
"OK. What's the first question?"
Generally speaking, would you say things in this country are heading in the right direction, or are they off on the wrong track?
I should have seen that coming. The infamous "right-direction/wrong-track" question has guided political media coverage for decades. It's shorthand for gauging public opinion about the president and Congress. The assumption is that a low right-direction score means people are ready for a change. During Bush's last year in office, his right-direction score was in the teens.
The current White House has seen its right-direction/wrong-track scores go from pretty good (43% said we were headed in the right direction after Obama took office, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll), to bad (the score dropped to 29% this past summer, before creeping up to 32% in October.)
But wait a minute, I say to myself. If polls point to a GOP takeover in the House and conservatism is on the rise, does that mean a Republican should say the country is now moving in the right direction? And wouldn't a Democrat want to respond that the nation is clearly going in the wrong direction because, let's face it, losing the House is not something any party would wish for?
"Can you explain what you mean by that?" I ask the pollster.
I'm not permitted to elaborate on the question. Do you want me to repeat it?
Then it occurs to me that the right-direction/wrong-track question is really a barometer for the economy. When times are good - even if partisanship and public cynicism are high - people tend to say the country is on the right track. This happened 11 years ago, as President Clinton dealt with a divided Congress, a colossal personal scandal and a subsequent impeachment. An impressive 54% of Americans said we were on the right track in March 1999. Did that mean we wanted more Monica Lewinskys? I don't think so. With a growing economy, people had jobs and were seeing their retirement accounts increase every year. That's what the right track meant then.
But is that what it means now? While people often base their political mood on their economic situation, this doesn't paint a full picture of current public pessimism. Unemployment is still high, but much of the recent economic data have been positive. Housing starts are up, earnings are getting stronger and even jobless claims are starting to drop. The stock market had its best September rally in 56 years. Pretty much everyone agrees the country is slowly pulling out of the recession.
So, why do only one in three Americans think we're on the right track?
Then I realize the right-direction/wrong-track index isn't just about politics, or even about the state of the economy. It's about hope - or lack of hope. "The American, by nature, is optimistic," said John F. Kennedy. For much of the past 230 years, we've been a nation that felt the future was ripe with possibilities. While many Europeans have long been pessimistic about the future, Americans have been driven by hope, which psychologists say is one of the keys to happiness.
Hope was what Barack Obama promised two years ago. After the terror of 9/11, two wars and a global financial breakdown, the world had become a scary place. Obama, supremely confident in his campaign, stood ready to take on these challenges. He not only attracted the Democratic faithful, he attracted the young, the poor and the politically disengaged.
He also attracted moderate independents, who projected their dreams on to an Obama presidency. In the process, they overlooked his lack of experience, his voting record and many of his campaign promises. Many were convinced he would move toward the middle and somehow forge bipartisan solutions to our most vexing problems. They were hopeful.
But now we're forced to acknowledge that there are no easy solutions. Bipartisanship doesn't come easily in a divided country. Stimulating the economy may create some jobs, but it doesn't solve a long-term fiscal crisis. Talking directly with rogue nations doesn't make them agree with our foreign policy.
With optimism tempered, more people feel we are moving in the wrong direction. According to recent polls, Republicans and right-leaning independents, in particular, feel that way. (So much for my theory that a vote for the wrong track is really a vote for the right track.)
Democrats, meanwhile, have been brought down to earth. A recent study from the Pew Research Center asked Republicans and Democrats how they would feel if their party held a majority in the House after the mid-term elections. Most of the words they chose - such as "happy" and "relieved" - were similar. But Pew noticed one major difference: many more Republicans than Democrats said the word that would best describe their feelings would be "hopeful."
I won't tell you how I answered the right-direction/wrong-track question. It doesn't really matter, given what an imperfect gauge it is of public opinion.
But I will tell you this: The poll took much, much longer than 15 minutes.
Comments? Email me at http://pac.org/contact/blog.
