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Politics
‘What Do You Think Is the Most Important Problem Facing This Country Today?’ By GREGOR AISCH and ALICIA PARLAPIANO FEB. 27, 2017
Since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Gallup polling organization has asked Americans an open-ended question: “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” As Donald J. Trump prepares for his first major address to the nation on Tuesday, he has a unique set of issues to tackle. But there is not one singular issue that is dominating the American consciousness.
The biggest problems cited by Americans this month:
With the economy humming along and United States troops withdrawn from major wars, Americans cited a variety of domestic problems as the most important. The top response was dissatisfaction with government, a sentiment Mr. Trump harnessed during his populist campaign. “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth.”
Barack Obama entered his second term after a major budget showdown with Congress and with another fiscal deadline, the federal debt ceiling, approaching. Mr. Obama regularly criticized Republicans for using the debt limit as a bargaining chip to cut spending. “So while I’m willing to compromise and find common ground over how to reduce our deficits, America cannot afford another debate with this Congress about whether or not they should pay the bills they’ve already racked up.”
Mr. Obama entered his first term during the heart of the Great Recession. During his first major speech before Congress, he promoted the just-passed stimulus package and the need for the government to further intervene in the financial system. “But while the cost of action will be great, I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not months or years, but perhaps a decade.”
George W. Bush began his second term two years into the war in Iraq. While he did not mention the country by name in his second inaugural address, he focused heavily on the importance of securing America by spreading freedom and democracy. “Our country has accepted obligations that are difficult to fulfill, and would be dishonorable to abandon. Yet because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom.”
Like the start of Mr. Trump’s presidency, the beginning of Mr. Bush’s first term lacked a major war or economic crisis, and Americans cited a variety of important problems. At the top of the list was moral decline in society, which had increasingly become a concern during the scandals of the presidency of Bill Clinton. “Our public interest depends on private character, on civic duty and family bonds and basic fairness, on uncounted, unhonored acts of decency, which give direction to our freedom.”
Crime was front and center in Americans’ minds during the debate over the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which Bill Clinton signed in 1994. It was still the most-cited problem by the start of Mr. Clinton’s second term in 1997, though its share had decreased. “Serious crime has dropped five years in a row. The key has been community policing. We must finish the job of putting 100,000 community police on the streets of the United States.”
Mr. Clinton came into office in 1993 in the midst of a recession, with the unemployment rate above 7 percent. But a financial boom soon followed, and by the end of his presidency, very few people still listed the economy as the key problem. “Our immediate priority must be to create jobs, create jobs now. Some people say, ‘Well, we’re in a recovery, and we don't have to do that.’ Well, we all hope we’re in a recovery, but we’re sure not creating new jobs.”
In his first address to a joint session of Congress, George Bush described his plans to wage a war on drugs “on all fronts.” Drugs were cited in more than a quarter of responses in May of 1989 and then in two-thirds of responses later that year. “The scourge of drugs must be stopped. And I am asking tonight for an increase of almost a billion dollars in budget outlays to escalate the war against drugs.”
After years of military buildup and an arms race with the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan entered his second term pushing for an anti-ballistic missile defense system that he said would “render nuclear weapons obsolete.” “I have approved a research program to find, if we can, a security shield that would destroy nuclear missiles before they reach their target. It wouldn't kill people, it would destroy weapons. It wouldn't militarize space, it would help demilitarize the arsenals of Earth.”
Mr. Reagan began his first term in office in the midst of a recession, with the inflation rate at a whopping 11.4 percent (it had come down slightly from 13.6 percent in June of 1979) and unemployment at 7.5 percent. “We don't have an option of living with inflation and its attendant tragedy, millions of productive people willing and able to work but unable to find a buyer for their work in the job market. We have an alternative, and that is the program for economic recovery.”
Concerns about energy – high prices and depletion of resources – bubbled up several times during Jimmy Carter's presidency. About a third of responses cited the problem during the oil crisis of 1979. “We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.”
When Gerald Ford assumed the presidency in August 1974, the nation was in the midst of a recession, and the inflation rate was rising rapidly. An early attempt to address the problem, a public campaign called “Whip Inflation Now,” did not last for long. “But I say to you with all sincerity that our inflation, our Public Enemy No. 1, will, unless whipped, destroy our country, our homes, our liberties, our property, and finally our national pride, as surely as any well-armed wartime enemy.”
As the Watergate scandal intensified, President Richard Nixon gave his first address to the nation on the topic in April of his second term, after two of his top aides resigned over the coverup. “We must maintain the integrity of the White House, and that integrity must be real, not transparent, There can be no whitewash at the White House.”
Mr. Nixon won his first presidential election in 1968, the year that American troops in Vietnam peaked at more than 500,000. In his speech accepting the Republican nomination that year, he promised to bring the war to an end. “And I pledge to you tonight that the first priority foreign policy objective of our next administration will be to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam. We shall not stop there — we need a policy to prevent more Vietnams.”
Nearly a year after Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and just two months into his first full term, civil rights activists held a march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., bringing voting rights to the forefront of Americans’ minds. “There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans — not as Democrats or Republicans — we are met here as Americans to solve that problem.”
Foreign affairs dominating the list of most important problems when John F. Kennedy took office, primarily the threat of war with the Soviet Union and the threat of communism. “Our greatest challenge is still the world that lies beyond the Cold War — but the first great obstacle is still our relations with the Soviet Union and Communist China. We must never be lulled into believing that either power has yielded its ambitions for world domination.”
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At the start of his second term, Dwight D. Eisenhower also faced several problems abroad, including the growing influence of the Soviet Union in the Middle East. No polls are available from the beginning of his first term in 1953, though one from 1952 shows overwhelming concern about the Korean War. “The Soviet Union has nothing whatsoever to fear from the United States in the Middle East, or anywhere else in the world, so long as its rulers do not themselves first resort to aggression.”
Harry S. Truman began his first full term in office four years after the end of World War II and the formation of the United Nations. Americans were still concerned about the threat of war and keeping the peace. “We are supporting a world organization to keep peace and a world economic policy to create prosperity for mankind. Our guiding star is the principle of international cooperation.”
The United States officially entered World War II in December of 1941, nearly a year into Franklin D. Roosevelt’s third term. A poll the month before reflected Americans’ concerns about the nation’s defenses and involvement in the war. “The need of the moment is that our actions and our policy should be devoted primarily — almost exclusively — to meeting this foreign peril. For all our domestic problems are now a part of the great emergency.”
Gallup began asking the “most important problem” question in 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression and two and a half years into Mr. Roosevelt’s 12-year presidency. The Works Progress Administration, which created millions of jobs in public works projects, was established earlier that year. “We must preserve not only the bodies of the unemployed from destitution but also their self-respect, their self-reliance and courage and determination.”
Gallup conducted its surveys using in-person interviews until the late 1980s, when it transitioned to telephone surveys. More recent polls are based on a mix of cellphone and landline interviews. In some cases, respondents have been allowed multiple answers. In its early days, Gallup used “quota sampling” to ensure that it surveyed respondents who were representative of the population as a whole, according to an interview with Alec Gallup, a former chairman of the poll. Today the organization uses random sampling and weights the data based on United States demographics. Source: Gallup data via the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research Correction: Feb. 28, 2017 An earlier version of this article misstated the year that Bill Clinton began his presidency. He entered office in 1993, not 1991. Email Share Tweet More
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