These Folk Can Cope

Readers old enough to remember the 1944 hit Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive may find themselves murmuring Johnny Mercer's upbeat lyrics as they delve into the newest study of the nation's health and status. The Real America (Doubleday; $7.95) will not be published until this fall, but galleys have been circulating in Washington for weeks; President Ford has already publicly applauded its conclusions. This is hardly surprising, since Author Ben J. Wattenberg's upbeat and arguable analysis of the state of the Union amply reinforces Ford's own optimistic outlook.

Wattenberg followed Ihe advice of his friend and sometime collaborator Richard M. Scammon (This U.S.A.; The Real Majority) to "marinate yourself in the data," notably from The Bureau of the Census (of which Scammon was once director). The statistic-laden result is a selective celebration of American achievement, particularly in the past decade, designed to hammer home one basic message: "The dominant rhetoric of our time is a rhetoric of failure, guilt and crisis. The evidence of Ihe data is the evidence of progress, growth and success." Improvement has been so rapid in recent years, says Wattenberg, that for the first time in history America has created a society that is predominantly (74%) "middle class." "The emergence of this Massive Majority Middle Class," he argues, "is a benchmark of major historical importance, and ils ramifications are enormous."

The rhetoric Wallenberg deplores comes mainly from a "hydra-headed infrastructure," which he labels the Failure and Guilt Complex. Born in the '60s, Ihe F & G C is not a Freudian concoction but a "loose, unorganized organization" incorporating members of "the Movement," "cause people" and "freelance naysayers" that together "came close lo dominating the intellectual discourse of our time."

Armed with his statistical broadsword, Wallenberg whacks at the Failure and Guilt Complex branch by branch. He demolishes the "explosionists" in the demographic branch with specifics on the falling birth rate that is replacing the population explosion ("if indeed it ever existed") and "may well prove to be the single greatest agent of an ever increasing, ever wealthier middle class in America." For the benefit of the F & G C's sociology faculty, Wallenberg marshals facts to support his thesis that "American workers are engaged in more interesting, more skilled and more productive work than any other workers, at any other time or any other place--including America only a decade ago." Contrary lo the claims of their detractors, these working Americans "spend their money predominantly on useful, important and often creative goods and services."

To counter the women's auxiliary of the F & G C, which insists that American women are "oppressed, indeed enslaved," Wallenberg brings on his secondary weapon, the opinion polls. From the findings of Gallup, Harris and others, he concludes that "American women don't believe they are living in a rotten, corrupt sexist society that has crushed them. They are, in fact, more satisfied than men." Similarly, polls show that the majority of Americans are middle class "because they think they are middle class, and they think they are middle class because they fit the criteria that they themselves have established for such status." As "everyone knows," says Wallenberg, middle-class people own their own homes, do not let their teen-agers drop out of high school, have washers and dryers, play tennis and get divorced.

Sunny Side. On page after page, Wallenberg repeats the refrain that is his definition of progress: "It is better by far than what it replaces." Focusing on the sunny side of modern society, he minimizes the clouds by looking only at their silver linings. The General Motors assembly line at Lordstown, Ohio, may be boring and dehumanizing, but it uses fewer workers to turn out more cars than earlier plants, thereby freeing other workers for more interesting jobs. Thus, Wallenberg insists, "the significance of Lordstown is in who doesn't work there." Wilh a similar cavalier indifference that would hardly win him friends in the South Bronx, Wallenberg says that even "the meaning of the worst black slums ought to be weighed by determining who no longer lives there."

Because many modern problems (e.g., crowded parks) "are the side effects of success, not the fruit of failure," Wallenberg suggests that they are not really problems at all. He dismisses critics of the food and decor at McDonald's, for example, with Ihe assertion that "the function of the fast-food business ... is quite simple: Women's Liberation." That is, it frees Mom from shopping, cooking and washing up, so don't complain. In the same vein, "suburban sprawl is a pejorative phrase that describes perhaps the most comfortable mass residential living conditions in history."

Such relentless optimism provides ready ammunition to those who would prefer to gloss over genuine problems. Statistics documenting what Wallenberg, in a dreadful stylislic lapse, calls the "deeliticization of American higher education," say nothing about the quality of life on campus. Nor does the claim that aimless retirement or a dreary nursing 'home are belter for the elderly than "dying in the traces" provide much comfort for hungry old people languishing on park benches.

Because Wallenberg believes that the good news in America has been so consistently understated, he overstales his case. He is not trying to be fair, he is trying to be remedial, by examining thal part of the glass that is full, rather than the portion that is empty. It is a perspective that doubtless will be widely welcomed. Wallenberg is of course right when he warns that "for a jittery, unconfident America to throw in its hand would be a global tragedy." But the formulalion is a straw man: he does not think for a minute that this will happen because the nation's fate is securely in the hands of his heroes, the American people. "... These people can cope," he says unequivocally. Indeed, the fact that Americans have coped so well in what even Wallenberg admits are troubled times "may be the most valued jewel in the diadem of American success."

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