Doesn't American Optimism Feel Like a Distant Memory?

Today on NRO KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: On the nauseating spectacle that is the State of the Union address. Great Caesar's Ghost. VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Obama used to sigh that he was not a dictator who could act unilaterally. No more. Governing by Pen and Phone. THE EDITORS: A GOP health-care plan to replace Obamacare. Healthier and Wiser. JOHN R. BOLTON: The mullahs' triumph in Geneva. A Dangerous Deal. ANDREW STILES: Imagine if Wendy Davis got the Palin treatment. Wendy vs. Sarah: A Thought Experiment. BESTY WOODRUFF: It's hard not to wonder if the Grammys put politics before music this year. Macklemore's Not the Best Rap Album. Morning Jolt . . . with Jim Geraghty January 28, 2014 Doesn't American Optimism Feel Like a Distant Memory? Highlights — or perhaps lowlights — from the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll: The survey found that just over half of Americans disapprove of the president's job performance, with 43% approving, a trough that remains little changed since the early summer. Nearly six in 10 say they are uncertain, worried or pessimistic about what he will do with the remainder of his presidency. Disapproval for Congress, too, is near its all-time high… Nearly three-quarters of poll respondents said the president should also make a top priority of reducing the federal budget deficit, an objective that Mr. Obama hasn't emphasized recently. Deficit reduction ranked second as a priority, after job creation, among a list of issues presented to respondents. … And while more Americans still believe the new health law was a bad idea than those who think it was a good one — 48% to 34% — a majority of those polled want to keep the Affordable Care Act and would like to see Washington fix it this year. And the poll reveals a particular problem of being an "Acela Republican" — beloved by the Washington and New York media, not-so-adored by the conservative grassroots: More Americans view the New Jersey governor negatively than positively, 29% to 22%. That is an abrupt shift from October, when 33% viewed Mr. Christie positively and 17% viewed him negatively. In addition, 44% of Americans don't think the New Jersey governor is telling the truth, compared with the 42% who say he is. The shift in sentiment has been sharpest among political moderates, who have long been Mr. Christie's strongest backers. The number of moderates who see him in a positive light has dropped by half since October, while the number who see him negatively has doubled. The State of Our Union Is Entirely Dependent upon the State of Our Families and Communities So the big theme of tonight's State of the Union address is going to be income inequality. One of President Obama's big ideas is getting a bunch of large corporations to "sign a White House pledge agreeing not to discriminate against the long-term unemployed when making hiring decisions." Shrug. That's nice. I guess we'll see whether the CEOs' pledge to the White House filters down to the human-resources departments, and whether those corporate recruiters will give those long-term unemployed folks a call, or find some other reason to not call. You can lay the problems of the unemployed, under-employed, poor, and struggling at the feet of corporate America's HR office, but we all know there's more to it than that. Mr. President, meet Joe. (Not his real name.) Joe's a friend of mine. He grew up in less-than-ideal circumstances, in one of the blue-collar corners of the Northeast. His dad wasn't around. Money was tight. Joe studied hard, went to a good school, and got both a degree and a master's degree. He moved to the D.C. area, where he works in education. I don't know how much money he makes, but from what I see, he's doing okay. He married a great girl, and they're raising two kids in the suburbs. The guy's one of the most devoted fathers I know. The rest of Joe's family back home . . . is still having a tough time. Kids without fathers around. Cops getting called over domestic disturbances. Real concerns about whether the children are being raised in the kind of environment that every kid deserves. From where I sit, Joe's a role model, a spectacular example of rising above hardship and living the American dream. As I understand it, the rest of Joe's family back home doesn't appreciate him that way, and a good portion of their interactions are marked by a tone of resentment towards him. Sometimes we on the right can be a bit insufficiently empathetic to those stuck in bad situations. It's hard for a kid to grow up with his values and priories in the right place without any role models. It's hard to function when you're surrounded by dysfunction. There's a lot less room for error at those poorer communities, those with more violence, fewer stable families, fewer "little platoons" to help a family through tough times. But I get really steamed when I hear about Joe's family and the way they resent the success he's had in life, his rock-solid bond with his family, the money he makes, the fact that he moved away from their dysfunctional environment. Dang it, he did what you're supposed to do, and the fruits of his labor and good judgment are obvious. He's the one they should be emulating. Instead, they seek out ways to convince themselves that he's the bad guy, that somehow he did something wrong by pursuing a different, and ultimately happier and more successful, path than they did. We can argue about how representative this individual situation is, but I suspect it's not that unusual. Yes, poverty is partially driven by a lack of opportunities and sometimes misfortune. But judgment and habit and values are big factors as well. This isn't to say that the poor deserve to be poor, only that they cannot rise above their problems until they take responsibility for their own situation in life and resolve to make better choices: to stay in school; to stick around and take responsibility when they get a girl pregnant; to avoid drugs; to avoid excessive drinking; to not resolve every dispute with fists through doors, windows, or faces; to put a little money away for a rainy day; to put their children's interest first. Those aren't always easy choices, particularly when life gets tough, but they pay off in the long run. Of course, there's no Federal Department of Instilling a Sense of Individual Responsibility.So we probably won't hear much about that in tonight's State of the Union. From the State of Our Union to the States of Our Unions . . . Here's Alyssa Rosenberg, with perhaps the most intriguing/non-snarky/thought-provoking/tolerable argument you may ever see on the liberal blog ThinkProgress, prompted by the performance of Jay-Z and Beyonce at the Grammy Awards: Rather than posing choices between these various elements of her life, or acting as if the math that leads up to having it all is impossibly complicated, Beyoncé is an argument that a great, mutually supportive marriage can be a context that makes all of these things easier to pull off. And that's what makes Jay-Z's appearance on stage with Beyoncé at the Grammys so lovely. Mrs. Knowles-Carter doesn't need her husband with her to dominate a performance space. But she chose their duet. And what we got was a performance that's explicitly about what a good time they're having together. Everyone else might get to look at her curves–a reminder that dressing up and showing off doesn't have to end after marriage, either–but Jay-Z's the one who gets to look a little goofy checking her out in wonderment that she's his, the one who actually gets to touch. She gets to own the stage by herself, first, and Jay-Z shows up when the song requires his presence, at which point Bey cedes the stage to him before taking it back. There's time for them both to shine. And at the end, Jay-Z throws his arm around his wife and squeezes her, and her head inclines towards his shoulder: there's room for mutual pride and tenderness here, too. This may not be the vision of marriage conservatives intended to try to promote. [Jim's interjection: Why not? Is there some conservative argument against "mutual pride and tenderness"? Quotes like this make me wonder if the writer knows any conservatives, or at least any married conservatives.] And it's absolutely a more aspirational, exciting good than the idea that marriage will discipline wayward men or provide support for women who can't manage economically on their own. But if conservatives want to sell Americans on marriage, maybe they have to talk more about the bliss half of wedded bliss, to think about the desire part of making marriage desirable. And maybe the entertainment industry that Douthat's singled out as the enemy of marriage has something to add to the case for marital happiness. If marriage is a product that conservatives desperately want to sell, the smartest thing they could do right now is to hire Beyoncé and Jay-Z as a product spokescouple. The piece is entitled, "At The Grammys, Beyoncé and Jay-Z Made the Case for Marriage that Conservatives Can't." The argument is wiser than the headline, because you can translate that as, "Two Immensely Well-Known Celebrities Made the Case for Marriage that a Political Philosophy Can't." It's more than a little unfair to ask why non-celebrities can't command the public's attention or win over hearts and minds as well as pop stars can, in a celebrity-obsessed culture such as this. Most of us married folk don't wake up in the morning and explicitly set out to "make the case for marriage." Hopefully we set a good example, and unmarried folks say, "Boy, I'd like to have a marriage like that someday." In other words, if a celebration of the institution of marriage requires both partners to be immensely successful and famous, with buckets of glamor, reams of positive press, and throngs of adoring fans, then our only other option is . . . Brangelina. Remember my wariness about conservatives citing quotes from Ashton Kutcher and Bono to bolster their arguments? Here we see the suggestion that marriage, an institution that has existed roughly as long as humanity has, and that has largely thrived in various forms in just about every culture around the globe, has suddenly become reinvigorated with coolness and desirability because a couple of glamorous celebrities tied the knot and appear to be making it work. I mean, good for them, but having your view of marriage shaped by these two doesn't strike me as all that different from taking health-insurance advice from Harold and Kumar. Cracked had an amusing article, "Five Reasons Why You Should Never Take Advice from Celebrities," and it's pretty darn funny (and very off-color) — and it's unnerving that it might be necessary. ADDENDUM: Even Mark Steyn's reruns feel prescient: "The State of the Union is the opposite. The president gives a performance, extremely animatedly, head swiveling from left-side prompter to right-side prompter, continually urging action now: 'Let's start right away. We can get this done. . . . We can fix this. . . . Now is the time to do it. Now is the time to get it done.' And at the end of the speech, nothing gets done, and nothing gets fixed, and, after a few days' shadowboxing between admirers and detractors willing to pretend it's some sort of serious legislative agenda, every single word of it is forgotten until the next one." He wrote this last year, and it still fits. To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com Why not forward this to a friend? Encourage them to sign up for NR's great free newsletters here. Save 75%... Subscribe to National Review magazine today and get 75% off the newsstand price. Click here for the print edition or here for the digital. National Review also makes a great gift! Click here to send a full-year of NR Digital or here to send the print edition to family, friends, and fellow conservatives. Follow Tweet Subscribe Send National Review, Inc. Manage your National Review subscriptions. 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