WHY WE HIT THE ROAD

By WALTER ISAACSON/MANAGING EDITOR

The idea of taking a bus trip across America came up during last year's campaign. Elections are often a chance to sense what issues people care about. But the candidates (and, for that matter, the media) seemed out of touch with the coffee-shop and dinner-table conversations that were going on.

So a group of us--led by Michael Duffy, Nancy Gibbs and Eric Pooley of our political team--concluded that it would be useful (and fun) to travel across the country listening to what was really on people's minds. Thus was born our "Backbone of America" project. We decided to take old U.S. Highway 50, which runs right through the center of the country. With a revolving cast of writers, editors and photographers (coordinated by special-projects editor Barrett Seaman), we visited factories and shops, ate at local cafes and in people's homes, joined in town meetings, played in pool halls and on gambling boats, and stopped our Greyhound at whatever struck our fancy.

We knew that three weeks on the road wouldn't make us experts on local issues. (On the other hand, that didn't seem a good argument for staying home.) TIME has journalists based throughout the country. With Nation editor Priscilla Painton prodding them to think unconventionally and dig deeper, they spent months scouting out stories and reporting them in depth. She and Steve Koepp, in addition to spending time on the bus, edited the issue. It features the pictures of Diana Walker, who took a break from her usual assignment as our White House photographer to join us on the road.

What did we find? It is, of course, tricky to generalize about a country this diverse. So on the following pages we let the tales and people speak for themselves. But along the way we found a few resonant themes.

Foremost among them is that the peace and relative prosperity Americans are enjoying has made them less fearful of economic change. Gene Wilson, who has been a Chrysler dealer in Flora, Ill. (pop. 5,400), for 50 years, says he has become convinced of the underlying resilience of local economies. "When we lost the railroad depot years ago, we thought we were done for, but then we had an oil boom. When that ended, we thought we were done for, but then a shoe factory came. Then that closed, but we had companies like Minwax, Haliburton, Sparton horns and a German company, Hella, that makes relay switches."

Flora's ability to attract a foreign high-tech company shows that many Americans have come to embrace rather than fear new technology. The Internet seems to have even more impact on information flow in small towns than it does in large cities. I spent the night in Hutchinson, Kans., at the home of John Scott, who was a missionary in what used to be Zaire and now runs a volunteer housing program. After dinner, I asked him what the latest news was in the Congo, and he turned on his computer to check out the Websites of people who were monitoring the situation. We surprised the manager of a Tyson chicken plant near Sedalia, Mo., by phoning from the bus and asking for a tour. After a flurry of calls to headquarters, he invited us in and showed us the new technology that will cut down on repetitive tasks; the workers said they were supportive because there are more than enough jobs to go around these days.

Communities are recognizing the importance of revitalizing their Main Streets, once decimated by the rise of megamalls and fast-food outlets. Whether they're restoring a downtown or starting a day-care center, people are less likely to plot ways to get federal grants or insist that the government come fix the problem.

There are still issues pulling us apart. The most prominent, as it has been throughout our history, is race. At a town meeting on affirmative action in Sacramento, we saw glimmers of potential accord, but there remains a conflict between two basic approaches: giving no special preferences based on skin color and finding ways to ensure that all citizens share equally in the American Dream. We also met people, like those in the coal mines of West Virginia, being left behind by the new economic forces.

But the most important--albeit most obvious--thing we found was that when the economy is expanding, Americans are a lot less polarized. In the stories that follow, there are even some hopeful signs of ways this attitude can root firmly enough to prevent a resurgence of the resentments that can occur when times get tougher. In a period of peace and prosperity, in a land as rich and beautiful as ours, that is the real test of America's backbone.