No, the alarming polls are those that report the growing number of Americans who believe themselves totally alienated from the mainstream of American society. Even those who support the two major parties have little enthusiasm for them, as the 1970 elections demonstrated. There is, today, none of the spirit that a Roosevelt, a Kennedy, or even a roughhewn president like Truman, could bring forth from the people. There has been a common thread through much of the support for men as seemingly disparate as Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, Eugene McCarthy, Robert F. Kennedy, and George McGovern. They are all individuals, courageous and outspoken.
People know what's wrong.
Listen to the taxi drivers, the waitresses, the filling-station attendants, the factory workers. They can speak with considerable eloquence about corporate and other institutional pressures. They see through a politician whose solution to inflation is to slash away at appropriations for education the same week he urges billion-dollar weapon systems. They've tried to fish in the polluted streams. They've had to return the defective and overpriced goods.