Public opinion polls continue to suggest that Americans are very frustrated these days. They are frustrated with the war in Iraq, the president, with Congress, with the choices in the presidential nominating process and, of course, with the traffic and weather.
The source of this frustration is not hard to locate. Americans traditionally do best when they can identify a challenge and devise ways to meet it. The construction of the first atom bomb and the race to the moon were both examples of American enterprise in action.
The summer of 2007 is notable for the absence of clear and well-defined challenges, and next year’s election seems light years away. No wonder people are anxious.
The nation’s political system is justifiably out of public favor. Congress dithers over matters that have more to do with next year’s election than with matters of substance.
Republicans, for the most part, are on the defensive when it comes to the war, energy, the environment, taxes, health care and immigration. To a very great extent, the party has been forced to focus on the past because of persistent Democratic attacks. The result is that the Republican presidential candidates have struggled to preserve a sense of optimism.
Meanwhile, the Democratic candidates for president continue to present a view of the world that can be summarized as follows: When George Bush is out of office, everything will be peachy. This simplistic view of the future was exemplified the other day when New York Sen. Chuck Schumer explained that under a pending Senate resolution, all American troops now in Iraq would either be home by next spring or safely out of harm’s way.
It is a version of the future that nearly everyone might like to embrace, if only it weren’t so unrealistic and so plainly motivated by narrow political interest.
It is widely believed that next year’s election would be one the Democrats would have a hard time losing, but the Democratic candidates seem tongue-tied when it comes to expressing a plausible vision of the future. They too often have relied upon a series of negative assertions that invite voters to fill in the details.
Here are some examples:
Some of these statements may be true, some may be partly true and some are clearly not true. Almost all of them are of no help at all because they don’t lead anywhere. They do not inform or enlighten. They merely invite an emotional reaction, but they do not facilitate useful or productive discussion.
It may well be that the nation should seek to avoid dependence on foreign oil, but that simply raises the much more important question of how this might be done. Should the landscape be converted to corn fields and ethanol be subsidized or should the nation undertake a major expansion of nuclear power plants and convert to electric cars?
Or, to take another example, does the high number of uninsured Americans necessarily mean the private health care insurance system needs to be abandoned in favor of government-sponsored health care?
It is transparently obvious that all of the challenges facing the country will survive the George Bush presidency. His departure in 2009 won’t usher in a new era, in which roses will grow without thorns.
If there is a bright spot in the latest public opinion polls, it is this: The public seems to be realistic. If it isn’t buying the sometimes bland assurances of the Bush administration, it also isn’t buying the magical solutions being peddled by Chuck Schumer and the Democrats.
This is one case where a political standoff may be the only logical outcome.
Al Knight of Fairplay (alknight@) is a former member of The Post’s editorial-page staff. His column appears on Wednesdays.
