America's high anxiety
Middle-class Americans' anxiety is mixed with a growing resentment at the widening gap between their wages and salaries and those of the wealthy and the upper reaches of management. The vast bulk of the income growth over the past decade and a half has been overwhelmingly concentrated in the upper 10 percent, the upper 5 percent, and, indeed, the upper 1 percent of America's income spectrum. The salaries of CEOs have gone from 40 times that of the average wage earner 20 years ago to over 400 times today.
Suspicions. Large, multinational corporations, meanwhile, are thriving as their profits benefit from outsourcing and cost cutting, while many educated, skilled, white-collar workers struggle to find the jobs they have been trained to do with the kind of pay they feel they deserve. And it doesn't help that this is all taking place at a time when the captains of industry, hailed as the conquering heroes of the 1990s, are seen as tainted by egregious behavior of the Enrons, Global Crossings, WorldComs, and Tycos that now dominate the financial news pages. Americans, understandably, are outraged at corporate executives who make millions while their companies decline or even fail, putting the pensions of ordinary workers at risk.
The fear and bitterness that pervade America two years out of recession are compounded by suspicions that the Bush administration is helping big business and the wealthy at the expense of those who work hard, try to save, and just want their kids to attend good and safe schools. This renders the administration vulnerable to a rising tide of populist anger--an anger that may also vent itself on the influence of Washington lobbyists on many of the major bills now wending their way through Congress that benefit their big corporate clients.
Such perceptions increase the likelihood of many Americans to see this changed economic landscape as the result of the Republican Party's support for the wealthy, especially the business community--a feeling compounded, for many, by the upper-bracket orientation of President Bush's tax cuts. They read the media, which attack Washington and Republicans in terms of health policy overly responsive to drug companies, energy policy shaped by oil companies, tax policy written to benefit the well-to-do, and environmental policy shaped by big business. A recent New York Times /CBS News poll found that 58 percent of Americans believe that Bush is more interested in protecting large corporations than ordinary people. A Washington Post /ABC News poll found that 57 percent disapprove of Bush's handling of job creation and trust Sen. John Kerry over Bush to create jobs, by 51 to 37 percent.
Then--and now. The Democrats and their pollsters sense this Republican vulnerability. That's why they're arguing that corporate power and crony capitalism have taken over an administration that simply doesn't care about the average American. This is a dramatic reversal from the 1980s, when it was the Democrats who were seen as devoting their efforts to benefit special interests, at the expense of white, middle-class voters. Then they saw Democratic programs as disguised efforts to help African-Americans, symbolized by Ronald Reagan's famous "welfare queens." President Clinton's signature on the 1996 welfare reform bill (over the angry protests of many Democrats) took this issue largely off the table. This has allowed Democrats to claim that they would put the government behind the interests not of select groups but of the 80 percent of Americans who earn $65,000 and less. So they have focused on comprehensive health insurance, increased funding for schools and colleges and job-generating public works, and on attacking those big Bush deficits.
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