Americans: Unhappy with Government

Faced with declining monthly American death totals from Iraq, ABC News last night chose to talk about the fact that the death toll in Iraq for 2007 is now the highest for any year. Always able to dig bad news out of good.

David Brooks has a column about the “happiness gap”—that between people’s private optimism and their public gloom. Brooks writes:

 American voters are happy with their own lives: 86% say they are content with their jobs, 76% say they are satisfied with their family income, 62% expect their personal situation to get better, and 65% are satisfied over all with their own lives — one of the highest rates of personal satisfaction in the world today.

 Yet Americans are overwhelmingly pessimistic about public institutions: only 25% are satisfied with the state of their nation; the 4th largest gap in the world between public and private satisfaction, trailing only Israel, Mexico and Brazil. 80% think this Congress has accomplished nothing, 68% think the country is on the wrong track, 62% think that when government runs something, it’s inefficient and wasteful, 60% feel the next generation will be worse off. We’re more pessimistic about government’s ability to solve problems today than in 1974, at the height of Watergate.

Noting that people are not personally miserable or downtrodden, Brooks speculates that neighborhood happiness is threatened by the global problems beyond people’s control: terrorism, rising health care costs, illegal immigration, global warming and the rise of China and India. He recommends politicians offer voters a few big proposals (and implementing strategies) that respond to these global threats. Brooks believes the New Deal succeeded because voters wanted to change the country and their own lives. But today, he suggests, people want the government to change so their own lives can stay the same.