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.
