There's a lot to chew on in this ABC/WaPo poll, but what's striking about the above graph (stolen from Brendan Nyhan) isn't just that 8 in 10 Americans currently think the country's on the wrong track, but that the periods where a majority of Americans felt the country was on the right track are few and far between. The only sustained period, in fact, was during the late 90s, presumably because of the economic boom. This chart doesn't go back this far, but I'm willing to bet the rest of the 1970s were just as bad, and the late 60s not much better, which suggests that Americans haven't been happy with the direction of the country since the postwar boom, and that economic conditions had a lot -- if not everything -- to do with it.
--Mori Dinauer
