Transcript

DARRELL WEST:  All of us recognize that we’ve seen a very dramatic start to the Obama presidency. GDP declined six percent in the last quarter of 2008 and also in the first quarter of 2009. America faces two wars and an uncertain international situation. There have been new initiatives ranging from the economy and financial regulation to education, health care, energy efficiency, and foreign policy.

This morning we are launching our new GovWatch Project, and you can see on your screens the URL for that. We have a web site at Brookings.edu/govwatch. And this is an effort to monitor and benchmark various clinical, policy, and public opinion indicators of our national situation. That web site has detailed data and charts on presidential and congressional approval ratings, trust in government, public satisfaction, right track numbers, views of the major parties, and political polarization over the last several decades. And on the desk in the hallway, I hope you were able to pick up our first report that has come out analyzing a few of those numbers.

And when I was writing that report, I was thinking about how different the public mood is today compared to three to six months ago. At that point, our situation was described as the mother of all fiscal collapses, the worse crisis in a century, and another great depression.

Now, for the first time in six years, a majority of Americans feel the country is headed in the right direction, consumer confidence is rising, and people are feeling more optimistic about the economy. So it certainly raises interesting questions about where we have been and where we are going.

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