What a weird week. But first, the most recent data…
According to Reuters, 68% of us think the country is on the wrong track.
According to NBC News, 75% of us think the country is on the wrong track.
According to Monmouth, that number rises to 80%.
The RealClearPolitics national average is that 71% of us believe we are on the wrong track; only 22% of us believe the country is headed in a positive direction.
Recognizing that with such a clear majority believing the same thing — which means, therefore, that both Democrats and Republicans and everything in between share like thinking — why do we feel the way we do?
Allow me to go back to the weird week…
We had a popular, liberal newspaper keep the assassination plot of a perceived conservative Supreme Court justice off the front page, making an approximate ½ inch reference in its national news blips, referring the reader to “page A20.”
We had a House committee run an atypical primetime hearing regarding the awful, Jan. 6th, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, but also hire a Hollywood television producer to attempt to make it look like a “blockbuster investigative special.”
We had a popular, conservative TV news station choose not to show the congressional hearing and then run their regular primetime programming commercial free, with no breaks when one might be tempted to change channels.
We had a President who seemingly avoids one-on-one interviews with journalists go on late night comedy television and an articulate actor instead speak to the press in the White House briefing room.
And we were reminded of how both the most recent former President and the current Senate Majority Leader each utilized temperature-raising rhetoric that is perceived to have contributed to the first two scenarios above. (Note: I am grateful for the Majority Leader’s later walking back of his initial magniloquence.)
It’s the clear manifestation of bias, and as the oft snarky HBO host, Bill Maher, said Friday night in regard to one of the news sources — which could be applied to each of them — “They just wear their bias on their sleeves, and if it’s not part of something that feeds our narrative, $#*&@! it, we bury it.”
I’ll repeat what one friend thoughtfully shared with me: it feels manipulative.
Let’s go back to the backdrop that 71% of us believe the country is on the wrong track. That’s such a large majority, it no doubt includes people who are ok with some of the above scenarios.
So why would such a politically diverse majority believe the same thing?
Is it the classic phrase by liberal strategist James Carville in 1992? … that it’s “the economy stupid!”
Is it the soaring inflation, probability of recession, or crazy gas prices that seem to rise significantly more by the week?
Maybe.
But allow me to paint this picture with a broader brush.
When I examine the weirdness of last week, it’s not that all of the above was all wrong (… although for the record once more, while we should not equate the two events, let’s be clear that what happened at the Capitol and what happened outside one justice’s home were each indeed criminal).
But the challenge I see embedded in the weirdness of the week is that there is a lack of authenticity in our approach. Left, right… you-name-it. There’s something in the approach that feels manipulative.
In order to be a country in which the clear majority believes we’re on a track headed in the right direction, we need to lead with integrity and communicate with authenticity. The state of both our union and unity depends upon it.
Respectfully…
AR