In this season of renewal, the American spirit is still bleak, but there are small signs of brightness ahead.
New polls show a “dour public mood is dragging down ratings for both parties in Congress and for President Obama,” with lawmakers’ approval rating at 17 percent, near an all-time low.
In contrast to an Arab Spring, no matter what daffodils and forsythia are saying, an American Winter of pessimism is persisting.
The dollar’s value is sliding, and despite the Federal Reserve’s efforts, “the pace of recovery from the global financial crisis has flagged.”
Spiked by the Middle East uprisings, high gas prices remind Americans daily that they are being pinched. And even liberal pundits warn that the President has chosen the “wrong economic message” to rally his supporters by falling into the GOP’s budget deficit trap instead of concentrating on job creation.
Reflecting all this gloom, Michigan is going Dickensian with a proposed new law to let foster children wear only used clothing from Goodwill, the Salvation Army and other second-hand stores. “I never had anything new,” the sponsor says. “I got all the hand-me-downs.”
Yet for those who look closely, there are signs of Spring–among them growing resistance to the Republican’s Ryan Plan to tear down the social safety net for the old, poor and disabled. Polls show overwhelming support for keeping hands off Medicare, and House Democrats have come out of hiding with a realistic plan that calls for more “shared sacrifice.”
MORE.