Don’t worsen sour mood we’re in, Mr. President
Biden would be wise to not repeat Carter’s mistake from 40 years ago
Whether you’re chatting with co-workers, watching TV or engaging online, one thing is clear: Americans are in a funk.
A recent poll confirms the obvious. In this year’s “Mood of the Nation” survey, Gallup discovered Americans feel worse about their country than they have in the two decades they’ve asked the question.
Just 39% of respondents are happy with how the U.S. is doing, down from 52% last year. That’s a 13 percentage point drop in a year; 28 percentage points down from the high point in 2002. And that was a few months after 9/11.
COVID is an obvious factor, but people aren’t happy about anything.
Gallup asked Americans about their satisfaction with seven aspects: quality of life, government, corporations, religion, economics and the
moral climate. All but one of these factors dropped by double digits. “The size and power of the federal government” fell by 7 percentage points. “Overall quality of life” fell by 17, the worst of all the metrics.
This isn’t the first time America has been in a lousy mood. Forty years ago, Jimmy Carter addressed the “malaise” of the late 1970s with one of the most disastrous speeches delivered from the White House.
“All the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America,” Carter said. “It is a crisis of confidence . ... We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”
Sounds familiar.
By the time Carter lectured Americans about “the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose,” TV sets clicked off around the country. Two days later, he asked for the resignations of his entire Cabinet. Eighteen months later, he was cleaning out the Resolute desk.
In his first month as president, Joe Biden is repeating Carter’s mistake.
“We remain in a once-in-a-century public health crisis that’s led to the most unequal job and economic crisis in modern history,” Biden said at an executive order signing. “And the crisis is only deepening. It’s not getting better; it’s deepening.”
His outlook didn’t improve when he moved on to vaccinations. “There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”
Thanks for the pep talk, Joe.
In the Biden’s defense, it’s still early. As with Trump’s bleak “American carnage” inaugural address, politicians love to lower expectations. If the economy isn’t surging by the 2022, Biden can claim the mess he inherited was far worse than he expected.
But if it’s ever the time for optimism, even a little, that time is now.
Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are surging because people doubt the stability of the U.S. dollar. A national debt of $28 trillion with an expected $1.9 trillion stimulus package tends to do that.
Despite promises of unity and bipartisanship, Biden has signed 30 executive orders to circumvent Congress entirely. He reacted to a weak economy by killing well-paying union jobs and threatening America’s energy independence.
Biden promised to “follow the science” but that hasn’t applied to school reopenings. Instead, he’s obeying stubborn teachers’ unions who refuse to return to classrooms across the country. Last week, his press secretary promised “teaching at least one day a week in the majority of schools by day 100.” In a town hall Tuesday night, Biden said that was a “miscommunication.”
Let’s hope so.
Perhaps after day 100, Biden will start bringing the optimism.
Voters in a foul mood don’t tend to reelect the party in power. Just ask Jimmy Carter.