New polls show Americans’ complicated feelings about the country, 250 years on

By Ariel Edwards-Levy, CNN

(CNN) — More than three-quarters of Americans think the country’s founders would be disappointed with the US today, according to a Gallup poll released this week – one of several new surveys spotlighting the public’s complicated feelings about the nation’s legacy as it approaches its 250th anniversary.

Just 19% of Americans think that the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be pleased by the way the US has turned out, with 77% saying they’d be disappointed. That pessimism is largely bipartisan: while Republicans currently take a slightly less dispirited view than Democrats, one-quarter or fewer across party lines think the founders would be pleased.

Gallup has been asking this question intermittently since 1999, and the latest reading is the most pessimistic yet.

“While it’s hard to know what the founders would make of America today, the poll is in keeping with a generally sour mood among the public today. Polls routinely show widespread dissatisfaction with the current state of the country.

Presidential historian Tim Naftali, however, thinks that if the signers of the declaration could witness the United States today, they’d mostly be astonished.

“Our language is the same, our principles are the same, but this country is far more powerful, far more diverse, far richer in many respects than I think they could have ever imagined,” he said. “We have surpassed the outer reaches of the most imaginative of them … I’m sure they would just find us rather fascinating.”

The public’s view isn’t all negative. Around 7 in 10 Americans say that, over the past 250 years, the country has had at least a fair amount of success in achieving its founding ideals.

Other findings from recent polls offer insight to how Americans see themselves and their country ahead of the semiquincentennial celebrations.

Americans view the US with a conflicting mix of pride and concern. In a Marquette Law School poll also released Wednesday, 66% of Americans say they’re at least somewhat proud of who we are as a country, but just over half say they’re optimistic about the nation’s future as a democracy. And in a Fox News poll, voters are more likely to consider themselves patriotic than they are to say they’re proud of the country today.

The public is almost universal in calling the right to vote and freedom of speech key to the country’s national identity, per an AP-NORC poll. But just under half – including a majority of Democrats – see that freedom of speech as facing major threats.

Pessimism about the country’s direction isn’t new, but it may be growing. In a recent NBC survey, just 38% of US adults say they’re confident that the United States’ best years still lie ahead, down from 45% in a 1990 survey. And 78% of US adults say that the American Dream is harder to attain now than it was a generation ago, although that’s not dissimilar from the 72% who said the same in a Roper poll taken more than 30 years ago.

(Nostalgia for the country’s earliest days isn’t new either – in a 1947 Gallup poll, 13% of Americans said that the signing of the declaration was the US historical event they’d most like to have been present for – the most popular choice and more than tripling the share who’d have preferred to witnessed either the Gettysburg address or the Japanese surrender in World War II.)

Being an American means different things to different people. In Ipsos polling earlier this year, half of US adults, including most of those age 45 and older, said that being an American is an important part of how they think about themselves. A majority of younger adults, by contrast, said it wasn’t something they thought much about.

Overall, 58% said it was important to discuss the nation’s successes and strengths, with an identical 58% also saying it’s important to discuss the country’s flaws and failures.

This year’s Independence Day celebrations are more polarizing than in the past. President Donald Trump has put his mark on the country’s 250th birthday plans. Per Marquette, 57% of Americans say they’re at least fairly interested in the commemoration. That’s similar to the share who expressed interest in the festivities in a Roper poll 50 years ago, ahead of the 200th anniversary of the declaration. But while there was no real partisan gap in 1976, Republicans today are 33 points likelier than Democrats to say they’re interested.

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