On the menu today: Surveys consistently show that large majorities of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, and only 15 to 34 percent of Americans tell pollsters that the country is headed in the right direction. But when Americans are asked about the direction of their home states, the numbers become much more evenly split — a pattern that I think indicates that lots of Americans just want their elected officials to do their jobs, not to behave like the most outrageous cast member of some low-rated reality show. Meanwhile, the Biden administration wildly overvalues the importance of the student-loan-debt issue, and a non-sarcastic argument that Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor should tell everyone urging her to retire to take a long walk off a short pier.
States Headed in the Right Direction, Country on the Wrong Track
Ask people whether the U.S. is headed in the right direction or on the wrong track, and polling will tell you that a large majority of Americans believe things are going badly — national survey after national survey finds anywhere from 58 percent to 68 percent of respondents saying that the country is “on the wrong track.” Every now and then, that figure will surpass 70 percent.
But if you ask people how things are going in their state, you’ll often get different, somewhat more optimistic answers. In the most recent Washington Post survey of Maryland’s registered voters, conducted before the Baltimore bridge collapse, people were about evenly split — 46 percent said the state was headed in the right direction, and 44 percent said it was on the wrong track. A February poll of Virginians by Roanoke College found 53 percent felt the state was headed in the right direction, and 42 percent felt it was on the wrong track.
Look beyond the Beltway, and you find similar results — people who are quite gloomy about the state of the country are at least somewhat cheerier about the condition of their state. In Florida, 47 percent of voters believe things in the state are headed in the right direction, while 77 percent think the country is on the wrong track.
Out in the Midwest, “44% of Iowans believe the state is going in the right direction, compared with 50% who think it’s on the wrong track.” — not great, but considerably better than the perception of the country’s direction. In Minnesota, 48 percent said the state is going in “the right direction,” while 52 percent said the state is going in “the wrong direction.” In Idaho, it’s about evenly split: 40 percent say its going in the right direction, 42 percent say it’s on the wrong track.
(One glaring exception is California, where just 33 percent think the state is headed in the right direction, while 57 percent think the state is off on the wrong track.)
In a whole bunch of states, there’s a chunk of voters — perhaps a quarter of all poll respondents — who think the country is on the wrong track but that their state is doing okay, or that life is getting a little better. Some of this might be simple partisan preferences between a GOP governor and a Democratic president, but that doesn’t explain all of it, because we see the phenomenon in blue states such as Maryland and Minnesota, too.
I suspect the difference between perceptions of how the nation is doing and how each state is doing is fueled in large part by the difference between how most governors handle their duties and how the most high-profile members of Congress do their jobs.
When a bridge collapses, Wes Moore doesn’t have time to fundraise or put on a show for the cameras or try to find a way to blame the state’s currently minimally influential Republican Party. The stakes of clearing the bridge debris and rebuilding it are too high for his state’s economy for any partisan shenanigans.
Forty-nine of the 50 states require balanced budgets, which means governors must live in fiscal reality, and can’t promise the moon and finance it through borrowing. Thirty-nine governors get elected in non-presidential years, so they can’t count on being carried to office on a presidential candidate’s coattails. They’ll rise or fall on their own record, so they must accumulate a record of accomplishments.
Now think about what you hear about Congress most weeks. You hear a lot about rabble-rousing Marjorie Taylor Greene, fire-alarm-pulling Jamaal Bowman, er, theater-attending Lauren Boebert, the incendiary comments of “the Squad,” and the removal of George Santos — which moved with all the speed of a kidney stone. You hear a lot less about the normal day-to-day work of Congress, like California Democratic representatives Jimmy Panetta and Julia Brownley and Pennsylvania Republican Brian Fitzpatrick attempting to create a grant program to teach kids foreign languages.
Maybe you love Moore, Glenn Youngkin, and the rest of the nation’s governors, or maybe you can’t stand them. But they’re all serious leaders, doing their best. They spend much less time and energy, if any, providing “angertainment.” They’ve got a job to do.
Which figures in Washington get the most attention? Clowns. Idiots. Maniacs. Larger-than-life personalities who would all make great competitors on a reality show. Both they, and us, would be happier if they chose that career path instead.
No wonder people feel like their states are headed in a better direction than the country. The people in the state capitols, flawed as they may be, actually take their jobs seriously.
To the Biden Team, Student-Loan Debt Is One of the Biggest Problems America Faces
On yesterday’s Editors podcast, we turned to President Biden’s latest power grab on student loans. As NR’s editors note, “The administration’s announcement contains no total-cost estimate. It in many cases says that debt will be erased automatically, with no requirement that recipients even apply for it. And it’s just as unconstitutional as previous efforts.”
My thoughts:
This really feels like the old anecdote about the drunk who is looking for his keys under a lamppost. And they say, “did you lose your keys over there?” And the drunk replies, “No.” “Then why are you looking over there?” “Because the light is better over here.” If you look at the way Joe Biden has approached his presidency, going back to January 20, 2021, you would think that student-loan debt is the biggest problem facing the country. Maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but there’s just an enormous amount of attention, an enormous amount of time, energy, political capital, and effort put into this. I don’t begrudge anyone who’s having some of their student-loan debt forgiven for enjoying it, and celebrating it, and saying, “This is good news.”
But really, [if] you ask me, “What keeps you awake at night, Jim?” . . . A Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The national debt and lack of entitlement reform. Russia storming through Ukraine and moving on to the Baltics. . . . Iranian nuclear weapons. . . . The border. There’s a lot of problems. And yet this administration has convinced itself that the two biggest problems it faces are [that] not enough people are getting forgiveness of student loans — after not having to pay them for, like, three years during the pandemic, let’s remember — and that they’re [perceived as] too friendly towards Israel. And that somehow, if they just do enough public stances opposing Israel, then everybody in Dearborn is going to vote for them, and the Muslim Americans, the Arab Americans, and the Palestinian Americans will come back. And they’ll win the state of Michigan, and everything will be fine. No! That’s not really what’s gotten Joe Biden in trouble. What’s gotten Joe Biden in trouble is that he’s older than dirt, everything’s really expensive, and we’ve had a policy that amounts to de facto open borders for the past three years. If he did something about that — I mean, he can’t do anything about his age — his numbers would be much, much better.
ADDENDUM: Over in that other Washington publication I write for, I make a non-sarcastic declaration that Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor should tell those urging her to retire to go pound sand:
When it comes to modern Supreme Court justices, 69 is actually just middle-aged. The average retirement age from the Supreme Court from 1971 to 2006, was 78.7 years old. Justice John Paul Stevens retired in 2010 when he was 90. And while Sotomayor has diabetes and travels with a medic, her mother lived to be 94. The justice has access to world-class health care. There is an excellent chance she will still be serving on the Supreme Court when a non-Biden or Trump president takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2029. . . .
She will reach her 15th anniversary on the court in August; by the standards of modern history, a retirement in 2024 would be remarkably early. Through overall U.S. history, the average number of years that justices have served is about 15. But in recent decades, tenures have grown much longer; since 1970, the average tenure of a justice has been close to 28 years. . . .
Now, some Democrats are basically proposing that the arrangement be altered: You get a lifetime appointment, as long as the party of the president who nominated you has good odds of keeping the presidency and a Senate majority. If a Democratic president becomes much less popular over the course of their term, or a Democratic Senate majority gets shaky, a justice is now apparently obligated to take early retirement.