What the Latest Polls Might Tell Us About Ourselves: Still Impatient but More Compassionate?

During the last presidential election I became quite interested in the public polling that was conducted on a daily basis. I followed those polls religiously, biting my nails and watching my preferred candidate gain and lose points as the days went by. It was interesting to see how public sentiment was influenced by different events. I was not the only one. Americans like polls a lot. All the major news organizations conduct Polls and organizations such as Gallup and Harris Poll exist for the sole purpose of conducting polls on everything from presidential favorability to laundry soap. I think that polls are so popular with Americans because they fit in so well with our democratic philosophy. Our vote and our right to voice our opinions are vitally important to us all, and as we have seen from watching the events unfold in Iran this week, Americans are not the only ones who feel this way.

Interpreting polls is a much more difficult task than conducting them, however. We have to be careful about reading too much information into them. Objectivity can be skewed by the type of questions asked, and public opinion can be influenced by the results of other polls. People with different political agendas might get two very different interpretations from the same poll. There's an idea for a new poll. Let's poll people to find out how they interpret the latest polls.

I usually try to avoid analyzing polls too heavily because of their high volatility, but I couldn't help making some observations about two polls that came out in the last week.

The more recent of these two polls was released by Washington Post-ABC news a couple of days ago. Respondents were asked if they thought that the economic stimulus that was passed earlier in the year was working or was likely to improve the economy. Just over 50 percent of those asked said that the stimulus would work and that was down from the 59 percent that were confident about its success two months ago. I found this perplexing since the economy has been showing some signs of improvement. The market has been improving, housing is beginning to stabilize, and businesses are starting to talk about profits again. Unemployment is still up, but we know that these figures are the last to recover in an ailing economy. So does this drop simply reflect the fact that we are impatient?

The economic slump we are in is the result of a mentality that developed at least two decades ago. It took years of greed, accumulation of debt, and a poorly regulated financial market for the whole system to come crashing down on us. Now maybe it is just overly optimistic thinking on my part, but it stands to reason that if the stimulus gets us back on track, it is going to take more than a few months. If history is any indicator, this type of stimulus should improve the economy, but the government cannot just wave a magic wand and make it happen overnight. We want what we want, and we want it now. It is this very impatience that made the economy spiral out of control in the first place.

Our impatience is also evident in the way we live our lives on a day to day basis. Perhaps, it because advanced technology allows us to have so much of what we want at our fingertips. I, for one, find that I am constantly annoyed by the silliest inconveniences. I get irritable if my web page takes more than a few seconds to load. Waiting in a long line of cars can drive me insane. This finally dawned on me one day when I was waiting in line at Starbucks. They were especially busy that day, so I had to wait about ten minutes for my cup of coffee. The young man at the counter apologized profusely and gave me my coffee free. I graciously accepted it, but then I suddenly felt guilty. I assured him that it was perfectly all right and that I was old enough to still remember having to wait for things. That was just a long way of saying that if we can no longer wait ten minutes for a cup of coffee, it's no wonder that we are dubious about long-term investments in our future.

All right. I am through complaining about how impatient we are as a society because I want to discuss the other poll that caught my attention. This is actually the more important of the two polls, and at the risk of reading to much into the numbers I will say that it warms my heart. A New York Times/CBS poll on health care reform reported that 72 percent of respondents support having a government administered insurance plan as an option. This was enough to make be jump for joy, but it wasn't this that had me gushing with love for my fellow Americans. Consider this. Seventy-seven percent said that they were at least somewhat satisfied with their own personal health care. Although at least half had concerns that the quality of their own health care might suffer under a new system, more than half were willing to pay higher taxes if it meant that everyone would have coverage. A majority were concerned about rising costs, yet only 25 percent of people felt that lowering costs was more important than covering the uninsured.

Not only do we clearly think that it is time to reform health care, but a majority of us want everyone to have access to it even if it could involve a degree of personal sacrifice. Perhaps this is simply because we understand that health care will ultimately cost less if everyone is insured, but I think it says something much more fundamental and wonderful about our culture. We are compassionate. We care about whether other people are alive, healthy, and happy. We understand that each of us does not exist in our own little bubble and see ourselves as part of a larger community. This was further evidenced on an even larger scale this last week when so many of our citizens expressed their deep concern about the people of Iran.

So maybe we still have something to learn about the virtue of patience, but we haven't forgotten that a little compassion goes a long way. My cup runneth over. I know. I know. It's only a poll, you say, but let me have my moment.