America's Upbeat Mood

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upbeat situation, I think it's a mystical experience that cannot be defined." In Pontiac, Mich., black Bookkeeper Mary Williams, 55, lives in a neat, integrated neighborhood. She is not poor, but neither is she glad about the state of the nation. A New York Times survey last fall found that only 35% of blacks said they were "very patriotic," compared with 56% of whites. In Fairmont, W. Va., Olympic Gymnast Mary Lou Retton's home town, people are brimming with pride, of course. Yet unemployment is running at 10%, and as Mayor Gregory Hinton says, "Patriotism does not feed the family."

With his uncanny knack for conveying a sense of some simpler, lovelier, bygone American age, Reagan has encouraged the notion that happy days are here again. "Reagan is our past speaking to us," says Political Historian Garry Wills, "and we want to remember with him." Furthermore, as Britain's weekly Economist noted, "Republicans have no hangups about patriotism." The conservative President in particular has always been fluent and profuse with the imagery and language of conventional, Decoration Day patriotism. Says Frank Quam, a farm-management teacher in Stewartville, Minn.: "Reagan is of that nature, the flag waving, and people like that." The Democrats, for their part, have a very tricky path to navigate. In a holdover from the supercharged politics of the Viet Nam War, many Democrats have been ill at ease with flag waving and the military trappings of national pride. Moreover, while Mondale must appeal to public worries about the monstrous deficit and the Reagan Administration's foreign policy stumbling, he cannot afford to seem a grim, party-pooping pessimist.

In an interview on an NBC news program last week, Mondale was pressed to cite one positive accomplishment by the current Administration. He could come up with no particulars, until, finally, he admitted, "I think that Reagan's tendency to give an optimistic feeling about the country is good." Mondale grants Reagan more credit for whipping up American optimism than do many analysts. Declares a White House adviser: "It's less a case of Reagan's having caused the mood than it is a matter of his reinforcing it." In describing Reagan's accomplishment, observers seem drawn to oceanic metaphors. "Ronald Reagan is riding a crest," suggests Duke University Vice Chancellor Joel Fleishman, "the crest of a phenomenon he did not wholly create, but which he exploits." Neoconservative Editor Norman Podhoretz agrees: "It's a wave that's been building, and Reagan has been appealing to it. It's a matter of the man meeting the moment."

Whether bringing Lenny Skutnik, the Air Florida crash hero, to his State of the Union address at the Capitol or making time for a photo session with Retton and the other Olympic medalists, Reagan manages to come off like a kindly Uncle Sam. Even when his rhetoric turns maudlin and manipulative, he seems sincere, for the President believes the patriotic pieties simply and intensely. He gives himself goose bumps. In a speech at the American Legion convention two weeks ago, Reagan went right to the heart of the matter. "What a change from only a few years ago, when patriotism seemed so out of style," he said. "I'm not sure anyone really