The end or American optimism

„Britain's Daily Telegraph — a conservative paper and that country's bestselling broadsheet — diagnoses us as a nation depressed, and cites polling data describing alarming percentages of Americans who expect their own economic situation to deteriorate further and that of their children to be worse still. As Toby Harnden, the paper's U.S. editor, wrote: »A country whose hallmark has always been a sense of irrepressible optimism is in the grip of unprecedented uncertainty and self-doubt. With the United States mired in three foreign wars, beaten down by an economy that shows few signs of emerging from deep recession and deeply disillusioned with President Barack Obama, his Republican challengers and Congress, the mood is dark«.

He goes on to cite one recent poll that found 39% of Americans now believe the recession-battered economy is in »a long-term permanent decline« from which it »will never fully recover«, and another survey that reported 57% of those questioned believe their children never will achieve the same standard of living they've enjoyed.

Pollster and political consultant Frank Luntz — a regular these days on Fox News — told the Telegraph that Americans don't hold Obama solely responsible for the nation's gloom. »Every institution in America has gone through a collapse«, he said. »The church is not what it was.... The media is much less trusted today.... Big business does not have credibility«.

One of the leading causes of this generalized collapse of confidence was noted in the Irish Times, the voice of that nation's establishment. Columnist and critic Fintan O'Toole, a recent visitor to the United States, wrote of being struck by the breadth and depth of the damage the recession has done to the most vital engine of the nation's economy — its great urban areas. »On their own, big U.S. cities make up some of the world's largest economies. If they were countries, New York would rank 13th in the world, Los Angeles 18th and Chicago 21st. Even Washington, D.C., has an economy larger than Norway's, Austria's or South Africa's. Ireland's GDP is about the same as that of Minneapolis or Detroit.«”