America Is Going on 20 Years of Dissatisfaction
It’s essentially the national motto at this point.
A Politico/Morning Consult poll came out Wednesday morning that — as most polls do — had whatever takeaway you’d like to draw from it, depending on your rooting interest. Democrats are up five points on a generic Congressional ballot; Joe Biden’s approval rating is 43 percent, which is almost exactly where Donald Trump’s was right before he lost the 2020 election. But I was most fascinated by the question that’s on all these big polls: Now, generally speaking, would you say that things in the country are going in the right direction, or have they pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track?
The Right Direction/Wrong Track question is a fundamental one in American politics, basically the polling equivalent of “hey, which way is the wind blowing right now?” But the question has utility outside of pollsters fine-tuning their bullshit barometers. “Are things going to get better, or worse?” is one of the central questions of American life; every parent for generations has at one point fretted about leaving a better world for their children than they one they inherited. What could be a more important question than that? Another way of asking this question is the most basic one: Are we going to be OK?
The Right Direction number, as you might expect, was low: 30 percent. Thirty percent of the populace believes the country is going in the Right Direction; 70 percent believes it’s on the Wrong Track. That seems bad, but two weeks ago, the poll notes, the number was 25–75. So I guess it has been a good fortnight.
What struck me about this poll, when I thought about it, was not just how unsurprising it was, but how inured I’d gotten to the notion that people were unhappy about how things are going. Seriously, when was the last time you got together with a group of people and they all said, “we’re feeling great about the world. Aren’t we lucky to be alive?” People have been feeling anxious and exhausted and terrified and angry and weary for as long as I can remember. Why would anyone think anything was getting better? When did anyone think things were going to get better?
So I decided to check.
Since February 1979 — February 1979! — Gallup has been doing weekly polls of Americans on a question that isn’t exactly Right Direction/Wrong Track but is close enough for our purposes: In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time? That’s more than 40 years of data on that fundamental question on how Americans feel about their country. That’s useful.
So, was I right in thinking it had been a long time since Americans were optimistic about their country’s direction?
According to the poll, the last time more Americans were satisfied with the direction of the country than were unsatisfied was … January 5, 2004. January 5, 2004! That’s nearly 20 years! It has been almost two decades since Americans thought things were going in the right direction. It would all go to shit pretty quickly after that, to be sure: The Iraq war dissolved into chaos, the deep divides in the country became vast chasms, Trump showed up — we’re not in our best era. It’s definitely of note that, when you dig into the numbers, that satisfaction number had been positive since 1997 until that week. (The only real stretch like that in the poll.) But it has been nearly 20 years since we collectively felt good about the direction of the country.
There are two ways to look at this fact.
- The world has been unusually terrible for 20 years in a way that makes people deeply unhappy.
- People have been deeply unhappy for 20 years no matter what was going on with the world.
I suppose, now that I think about it, there’s no reason it can’t be both.
Will Leitch writes multiple pieces a week for Medium. Make sure to follow him right here. He lives in Athens, Georgia, with his family and is the author of five books, including the Edgar-nominated novel How Lucky, now out from Harper Books. He also writes a free weekly newsletter that you might enjoy.