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Commentary: Many fear American dream dying

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By William Hershey, Staff Writer Updated 11:15 PM Saturday, March 20, 2010

COLUMBUS — The American dream seems to be in hiding these days, in Ohio and across the country.

It’s hard to dream about opportunity and a better future when you don’t have a job.

It’s tough to even get to sleep at night if you’re worried that the bank’s going to take your house.

Americans and Ohioans in particular are dealing with both problems.

Ohio’s 10.9 percent unemployment rate for February, reported on Friday, March 19, marked the 11th straight month that joblessness has been in double digits.

Meanwhile, Ohio set an unenviable record last year, recording 89,053 foreclosures, up 3.8 percent from 85,773 in 2008.

Into this gloomy environment, Xavier University’s Institute for Politics and the American Dream last week plopped down a different kind of study.

It didn’t gauge approval ratings for President Barack Obama or Gov. Ted Strickland nor did it ask what Americans think of the health care overhaul banging around in Congress.

Instead, the American Dream Survey took a scientific look — 1,022 telephone interviews conducted by Fairbank, Maullin, Metz and Associates — at just how Americans view themselves and the world they live in during these tough times.

Some results probably shouldn’t have been surprising.

Fifty-eight percent said the country is on the decline, while just 32 percent said the United States is on the rise.

The condition of the American dream received the lowest marks in the industrial Midwest — Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin — a region where shuttered factories have become a permanent part of the landscape.

What struck Michael Ford, founding director of the university’s institute, as more significant was how those in the survey believed the rest of the world viewed America.

“Does the world still look at the United States as the direction of the future? A majority said not,” said Ford, 61, a veteran Democratic consultant who worked on nine presidential campaigns until sitting out the 2008 campaign.

Just 45 percent said America still represents the future, while 52 percent said the world now looks to many different countries to see what the future will be.

That should set off alarm bells at a time when the United States, with a generally free market approach, is being challenged as never before by China, with its government-controlled version of capitalism, for world economic leadership.

Still, the survey results don’t necessarily mean the best days are over for Ohio and the rest of the country.

It’s hard to step outside history when you’re living through it.

Americans have recovered their optimism before after slogging through difficulties far worse than the current ones.

Families scraping through the Great Depression, for example, were too busy looking for a job and a meal to even imagine the opportunities that would come their way with the post-World War II economic boom.

The survey’s most optimistic results came from Americans who either have the most challenges to overcome in achieving their dreams — minorities and immigrants — or the young, those just starting to make their dreams come true. All three groups were more positive about the American dream than others in the survey.

Cory MacPherson, 21, of Beavercreek, a senior at Wright State University, wasn’t in the survey but represented that hope.

“I think there are jobs out there. There are opportunities out there,” she said. “It’s just going to be harder to find them.”

Contact this reporter at (614) 224-1608 or whershey@Dayton DailyNews.com.

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