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    Poll: Obama is Dreamer in Chief

    Posted:
    06/9/09
    Filed Under:Barack Obama, Economy
    A new poll brought to our attention asks the American people a basic, and politically significant, question: Despite current economic uncertainties, do you still have big dreams for yourself? A big majority said yes. It's probably not too much of an exaggeration to say that if Americans quit dreaming of great futures for themselves and their children, it would be tough on the Democrats to stay in power – and that President Obama is probably looking at a single term in office. But that's not where the American public is.

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    As proof that the United States has definitely not become a nation of "whiners" (Phil Gramm), let alone "girlie men" (Arnold Schwarzenegger), more than three-fourths of Americans answered affirmatively to the big dreams query. The precise number who said yes in the new Ipsos Public Affairs poll was 77 percent, with only 21 percent saying no. Twelve percent of those polled, perhaps responding to the survey question too literally, said they didn't have big dreams even before the "current economic uncertainty."
    In other words, red-blooded Americans are spitting in the eye of this Great Recession.
    There are two ways to look at this phenomenon. The first is that everyday citizens are keeping their wits about them even while the media and the political class beat the drums of the Panic Dance. The other way to view it is that most of the nation is in a kind of clinical denial. In any event, men (80 percent) were slightly more hopeful than women (75 percent), while adults under age 35 nearly busted the optimistic meter -- with 89 percent saying they still dream big dreams, recession or no recession. Ipsos also uncovered a less pronounced, but noticeable regional variation: The Midwest was in the cellar, with only 71 percent answering positively on the dream question. The other three regions were all around 80 percent.
    There are strong hints in the survey that Americans are quite conscious that harboring huge dreams is a national trait so ingrained that it is practically expected. One question in the poll was the following: As a whole, do you think that Americans are a people that dream about accomplishing big ideas or great things? Only 14 percent said no, with 85 percent answering yes.
    This poll, called the "Sleep Better, Dream Bigger Survey," was underwritten by the Richmond-based Carpenter Co., which makes cushions and pillows. It's a bit of a gimmick, you might say, having a pillow company sponsor a poll on dreaming – but if the link between sleeping and dreaming was a good enough poetic hook for William Shakespeare ("To sleep, perchance to dream") it's a good enough news peg for Politics Daily.
    Because both Ipsos and The Martin Agency (Carpenter is its client) are media savvy, they knew to include a few sexy questions, or, rather, I should say questions that no political writer could resist, including: Who is America's Greatest Dreamer?
    This is an open-ended question, meaning that of the poll sample, which was 1,000 people, you conceivably could get 1,000 answers. Not even close. Factoring out the 343 respondents who said they didn't know or who proffered no answer, an eye-opening 33 percent named Barack Obama as the nation's top dreamer. Another nine percent, replied, "the president," without saying whom they meant.
    This could mean Obama. Or it could mean whoever is president – and there was some evidence for that proposition: two percent named Ronald Reagan, two percent named George Washington, two percent named Abraham Lincoln, while one percent each named George W. Bush, John F. Kennedy, and Thomas Jefferson. Yes, that last number seems awfully low for the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and pulled off the Louisiana Purchase. But remember, the question was phrased in the present tense. Furthermore, only one respondent named Franklin Roosevelt, the same total John Adams and Lyndon Johnson garnered. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton picked up two stray votes, as did Teddy Roosevelt.
    Among non-presidents, Bill Gates garnered one percent, as did God and Thomas Edison. Make of that what you will, although some variation of a pun on "Let there be light" comes to mind. Eight percent of Americans named themselves, which seems healthy, and suggests other Edisons are out there somewhere.
    Perhaps because the word "dream" is so indelibly associated in the American psyche with the "I Have a Dream" speech delivered on the National Mall in 1963 by Martin Luther King Jr., seven percent named the martyred civil rights leader as the county's greatest dreamer -- second only to the current president.
    Barack Obama, then, is the historic intersection between two national impulses: The first being to view the president as a kind of national Dreamer in Chief. The second is to associate the concept of big dreams with the civil rights movement. "Obama ran away with it," Sean Simpson, research manager for Ipsos, told me. "His message of hope is one a lot of people believe in, and have taken to heart."




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    Carl M. Cannon

    Carl M. Cannon is the senior Washington correspondent for PoliticsDaily.com. Previously, Carl was the DC bureau chief for Reader's Digest... more

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