Better than this
If you are struggling to wrap your mind and heart around the passions roiling our country right now, it might be productive to look back a decade for context. What strange alchemy is at work?
According to the polls, America’s most recent experience of a happy equilibrium was from June 10 to June 14, 2009. For five halcyon days early in the presidency of Barack Obama, Americans as individuals looked at America the nation and were perfectly balanced: 45.8% of respondents told pollsters the nation was headed in the right direction and 45.8% said the nation was headed in the wrong direction (according to the realclearpolitics.com average of national polls).
No dramatic event occurred that month, but the Great Recession was beginning to crest. Our brief, happy stasis ended. Unemployment and “wrong direction” numbers spiked in July. The worst came in October 2009, when unemployment hit 10% and a whopping 77% of citizens said the U.S. was on the wrong track.
While we haven’t achieved equilibrium again, we also haven’t hit the negatives of October 2009 — not even as of June 9, 2020. It was astonishing to discover, in fact, that the closest America’s factions have crept to each other since that brief moment in June 2009, and for the longest sustained stretch, has been during the Trump administration.
Yes, despite the constant uproar, our right direction-wrong direction outlooks began gradually pulling closer together after the November 2016 election. They have stayed fairly consistent ever since, with “wrong direction” hovering around 55% and “right direction” around 40%.
The “wrong direction” numbers slowly grew as the COVID-19 lockdown began, but it spiked after the slaying of George Floyd. By June 9, it hit 70%. That’s still not as bad as the public mood in October 2011 but, looking at a very new survey question, last week 80% of registered voters in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll said the country is “out of control.”
Dig into the headlines that accompany these shifts in public perception and the only consistent factor you find is the trajectory of unemployment. Through 2009, it rose to 10%. From March 2018 to the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, unemployment had been at 4% or below.
This makes sense, up to a point: When we have work and can provide for our families, we are more optimistic about society and government. All things being equal, “it’s the economy, stupid.”
But all things are definitely not equal right now. We saw quickly that COVID-19 lockdowns disproportionately hurt service-industry workers, low-income workers and minorities. As a society and as individuals, we were holding it together, we had persevering spirits despite widespread financial pain, until the horrifying murder of George Floyd. We are no longer holding it together.
What this says about our nation — about us as people — is actually reassuring. A rosy economic picture isn’t enough. We also need to have confidence that the promise of America — our unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — is available to all.
And we need leaders who can renew our beleaguered trust in representative democracy.
The lesson those would-be leaders should take away from a decade-plus overview at our collective outlook is that we can distinguish rhetoric from reality. We value both.
As a nation, we gave President Obama our vote of confidence despite grim numbers, until reality overwhelmed the rhetoric. Conversely, we withhold a significant measure of approval from Donald Trump, unhappy with his tone and thus discounting his administration’s strong employment record.
At every level of government, at universities and corporations, we want leaders who can satisfy our hunger for justice without caving to or inciting the destroyers. Leaders who won’t ignore the rule of law that binds a nation of 331 million people in order to placate a couple thousand twits on Twitter. Leaders who will not allow the “cancel culture” to cancel our entire culture.
We, the people, are better than this moment, and we are proving it at this moment.