Michael Medved: America's public gloom contradicts people's enduring, if private, confidence

It’s no wonder that Americans feel so deeply disconnected from their elected leaders when their contradictory opinions show them similarly out of touch with themselves.

Public approval of Congress has plummeted to an historic low (18%, with a staggering 76% disapproval, according to a recent Gallup Poll) while an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey reports that more than two-thirds of us (68%) believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction.

Meanwhile, when asked about our own lives, Americans express overwhelming contentment and dazzling confidence. In a mid-August Harris Poll that asked respondents to evaluate their satisfaction levels “with the life you lead,” an amazing 94% declared themselves satisfied (with a clear majority ”” 56% ”” choosing the highest rating of “very satisfied”). Meanwhile, 62% expected their “personal situation” to get even better in the next five years, as opposed to a paltry 7% who anticipated that their circumstances would get worse.

On the surface, these responses look almost laughably inconsistent. Some 68% of us believe the nation is “off on the wrong track,” but by a ratio of nearly 9-to-1 we’re confident that our lives will improve, rather than deteriorate, in the next five years. Only 17% say our personal status “got worse” in the past five years (while 54% reported improvement), but by crushing margins of more than 4-to-1, we tell pollsters we disapprove of the job our leaders are doing.

In other words, Americans seem to embrace the odd conviction that each of us dwells upon some sun-kissed, optimistic island of happiness and advancement, while the rest of the country marches dramatically toward catastrophe and collapse.

Read it all.