Controversy and dissent make news - it's the nature of the beast, and gives us some of our liveliest reading - but the real economic story as America enters the 1990s is that the country is in a surprisingly relaxed and confident mood.
This underrecognized fact helps explain such otherwise incomprehensible developments as the economy's refusal to quit and plunge into recession, even after a record seven-plus years of national expansion, and the electorate's preference for candidates, in both parties, who offer reassurance rather than revolution.Consider, just for an unfashionably calm moment, some of the detailed results of a nationwide poll taken by the Roper Organization for my television special, "Louis Rukeyser's 1990 Money Guide." The results provide an intriguing challenge to the conventional angst.
For example, despite all the media attention to the problems of our society in the 1980s, most Americans had a pretty good decade. Eighty-one percent said it had been moderately or very good for them, and 72 percent thought it had been good for the country, too.
The problems facing us in the 1990s - debt, pollution, international upheaval - are widely, almost incessantly, reported, but most Americans seem to think we will be able to handle them. The survey found even more optimism about the next decade than about the last, with 83 percent expecting the 1990s to be good for them and 77 percent thinking the country will have a reasonably pleasant ride, too.
Nor was the sense of progress restricted, as is sometimes suggested, to an affluent white majority. In the overall sample, 49 percent said race relations in the United States are better than they were 10 years ago (only 14 percent said worse). Interestingly, the positive response was even stronger among blacks (51 percent said better, only 10 percent worse), as the impact of a succession of black election successes apparently overshadowed the angry rhetoric of the left.
Obviously, though, the country is not in a totally happy mood. We worry about education, drugs and the homeless; we remain deeply divided over abortion, and we feel frustration and fear toward the Japanese.
Fully 58 percent said Japanese purchases of American real estate and businesses represent a threat to the U.S., and only 9 percent thought such purchases should be encouraged. But our willingness to compete is limited: given a number of proposed remedies for America's educational deficiencies, fewer than one in eight chose the Japanese policy of a longer school year. The favored solutions were having tougher standards for teachers (35 percent) and paying teachers more (32 percent).
Similarly, on drugs, the most popular answer was the quick fix of cracking down harder on drug imports (47 percent), which not only would fail to deal with the problem of enormous U.S. demand but which ignores the huge domestic production of narcotics. And, with the highest percentage of the nation in history currently employed, 58 percent nonetheless thought providing more jobs was the best answer to the problems of the homeless.
While several of these areas suggest unformed opinion that could be subject to more decisive national leadership, another area - abortion - is clearly a mine field for all who enter. Given four options, two of which emphasized women's rights to abortion and two of which would have prohibited most or all abortions, the totals showed precisely 48 percent on each side.
Abroad, Americans generally admire Mikhail Gor-bachev but don't think the Cold War is over yet. At home, we worry about money (what else is new?) but work at getting better at handling it (64 percent rate themselves good or better at managing money; where were they when Wall Street needed them?).
And, with all the recent condemnations of the alleged "Decade of Greed," here's further evidence that while people tsk-tsk a lot at Hollywood's jeremiads on that subject, they always assume that it is the other fellow's emotion. Asked whether Americans in general were too greedy in the 1980s, 56 percent agreed that they sure were. But, asked if "you, personally" were too greedy in the 1980s, fully 77 percent swore that it was "not true of me."
All in all, then, a country aware of many shortcomings but confident of its ability, on balance, to go forward. Those who repeatedly forecast the end of American civilization may, once again, have to bite their tongues in the 1990s.