America's National Mood Was OK in 1988-1991

Materially, Americans are far better off than they were during the Cold War. But even thinkers who acknowledge this truism often fondly reminisce about the long-lost Golden Age of American optimism that supposedly spanned the second half of the 20th century.

This reminiscing always puzzles me, because I vividly remember the second half of the second half of the 20th century. Except for a brief window of roughly 1988-1991, my first-hand experience is that America’s national mood has been relentlessly bad. While I’ve known plenty of American optimists, and count myself among them, “American optimism” is a will-o’-the-wisp. It appears so fleetingly that you have to wonder if it was ever there at all.

A quick chronology of my first-hand experience with 1976-2000:

1976-1981 - Americans are miserable about inflation, defeat in Vietnam, and the Iranian hostage crisis.

1982-1987 - Americans are miserable about inflation, nuclear war, and Soviet advances around the globe. And despite Reagan’s two landslide victories, journalists and other intellectuals are vocally miserable about “massive” cuts in the welfare state, Reagan’s stance on Nicaragua and El Salvador, and the Iran-Contra scandal.

1988-1991 - As the Soviet bloc collapses, mainstream journalists rejoice. They favorably discuss “free-market reforms” on a regular basis. I kid you not. There’s a brief jolt of negativity before the Gulf War, but easy U.S. victory leaves Americans feeling pleased with themselves.

1992 - Despite near-bloodless total triumph in the Cold War, plus the boost from the Iraq War, a mild recession unleashes severe discontent against “12 years of Republican neglect.” Bizarrely given the size of today’s national debt, both Clinton and Perot run as deficit hawks, warning of future fiscal disaster.

1993-1997 - Malcontent with “shock therapy” in the former Soviet bloc squelches lingering optimism about Communism’s collapse. Republican House victory in the 1994 elections sparks widespread mutual recrimination and hysteria.

1998-2000 - The Lewinsky scandal and its political fallout almost totally drown out any optimism about the roaring economy or the rise of the Internet and e-commerce.

To be clear: I don’t claim that the typical American was personally unhappy from 1976-2000. But the reason was that most Americans, like most human beings, are politically apathetic. But when Americans were thinking about “the state of America,” their thoughts were normally dominated by sheer disgust.

The good feelings of 1988-1991 weren’t just a total fluke. They dissolved like cotton candy. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine a greater failure of the retrospective voting model. America’ long-term archrival, the Evil Empire, peacefully disintegrated the year before the 1992 election. At the 1992 Republican national convention, Jack Kemp remarked:

Ladies and gentlemen, communism didn't fall. It was pushed. It was our ideas that did the pushing and our Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan and George Bush, that helped change the world.

If there was a 5% chance that Kemp was correct, retrospective voters would have rewarded Bush with a second term. But instead, Clinton triumphed with the insipid mantra: “It’s the economy, stupid.” The simplest explanation is that even at the pinnacle of America’s improbable peaceful geopolitical ascendancy, only a small minority of Americans felt deeply good about it.

What my first-hand experience can’t rule out is that America had a great national mood from 1946-1975 or so. But I seriously doubt the national mood was very optimistic then, either. Throughout my youth, none of my elders ever waxed rhapsodic about how great America was doing in the 50s, 60s, or early 70s.* One or two of my teachers were nostalgic for the student protests of the 60s. But I can’t recall anyone who lived through 1946-1975 reaching out to share their memories of a unified, self-confident America.

Sure, you could protest, “But tons of wonderful historic improvements happened throughout this era.” So true, yet so irrelevant. In politics, subjective attitude and objective performance are barely related. This was true in the past, and it’s true today.

So what’s going on? The proximate cause is the endless doom-saying of the media. But if most potential viewers were like me, doom-saying media would have gone bankrupt long ago. The ultimate cause, rather, is that human nature — or to be more precise, human political nature — is broken. Politics is a bizarre combination of childish wishful thinking and monstrous misanthropy. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Politics is cruelty. And while there’s little you can do about it, at least there’s some karmic relief. (Pun intended). Namely: People who revel in the cruelty of politics spend most of their lives wallowing in bitterness. Before long, their hangover perpetually overshadows their intoxication.

If you earnestly want an optimistic mood, you must psychologically detach yourself from your society. Sure, know Our World in Data forwards and backwards, so you never lose sight of humanity’s glorious economic and technological accomplishments. But the real key to an optimistic mood is focusing on outcomes you personally control. Make friends, find true love, get meaningful work, earn money, play games, see the wonders of the world, have kids, and appreciate the cornucopia of consumer goods available at the click of a button. Instead of finding meaning in your society, be a model of meaning for your society. Your fellow citizens probably won’t heed your example, but that’s on them.

* I did have one teacher who glowingly told us that he volunteered to fight in World War II when he was underage.

Role models.