America's Upbeat Mood

(2 of 12)
TIME by the polling firm Yankelovich, Skelly & White, reached a low point in 1975. During the Bicentennial celebrations, all sorts of Americans were surprised to find themselves feeling a frisson of harmless patriotic pleasure. Between June and September 1976, the surveys showed a 10% jump in the "state of the nation index," the fastest rise recorded by Yankelovich before or since. Carter's improbable, romantic victory sent spirits higher still, to a level not reached again until this year. But after his first year, the mood started to sour, declining further after the American embassy staff was imprisoned in Tehran.

Days after the hostages were freed, a New York Times editorial marveled that they had "returned to a different country than the one they knew only 14 months ago." Declared the Times: "Now the pride and patriotism that many people tried to unfurl during the Bicentennial have erupted without embarrassment. It's not as though there were no more divisions in the country ... But on every side, there has suddenly appeared a need to express national unity, to demonstrate an unashamed patriotism." From the outset, Reagan benefited from this yearning: the hostages left Iran on his Inauguration Day.

In 1981, after a pair of Navy F-14s blasted two Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra, the jolt of home-team pride was strong, and the taking of tiny Grenada last year prompted more V-G-day celebrating than seemed strictly appropriate. Jesse Jackson's presidential candidacy, despite the antagonisms it sometimes stirred, was a salutary symbol of black progress. The Democrats' historic nomination of a woman for Vice President added to the political selfesteem. The high spirits surrounding the Olympic Games struck some observers as jingoistic and ungracious. But with American athletes winning nearly everything in sight, the country was able to see itself as it liked: wholesome, powerful, a touch rowdy. Americans could celebrate as they had not done in a long time.

In The Confidence Gap: Business, Labor, and Government in the Public Mind, published just last year, Stanford University Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset and Political Analyst William Schneider examined reams of survey research and concluded that an American malaise, a loss of faith in social institutions, was continuing unabated. Now, however, Lipset's view of the national climate has changed strikingly. "I think it will take some years for Americans to have digested the disappointment they felt over Viet Nam and Watergate," he says, "but I think we are witnessing a fundamental shift toward more positive attitudes about American institutions." Two-thirds of the respondents in a TIME-Yankelovich survey last month felt that things were going "very well" or "fairly well" in the U.S. It was the most upbeat reading since the Carter honeymoon in 1977.

For many people, the improvement is a quiet, half-conscious affair. For many others, patriotism seems the natural, handy outlet for America's jaunty spirits and prosperous circumstances. Like any other kind of love, it is an emotional catchall for all sorts of hankerings and other sentiments. "Whenever I go to Dodger Stadium, I feel very patriotic, so proud to be an American," explains Susanne Anderson, 36, a Las Vegas casino bartender. "Nowhere but in