In "Declinism Resurgent," The Economist notes that Americans are quite pessimistic right now:

Six months from polling day, America’s election campaign has opened with a blizzard of tendentious commercials, contrived razzamatazz and mind-numbing trivia. Was the stadium in Ohio at which Barack Obama launched his campaign on May 5th really “half empty”, as a conservative website reported? (Probably not: there were perhaps 14,000 Obama supporters in a stadium that can accommodate some 20,000 people.) Had the vice-president, Joe Biden, embarrassed his boss by expressing support for gay marriage when Mr Obama’s own thoughts were supposedly still “evolving”? (Not for long: within days Mr Obama announced that he now supported it too.) On May 8th Mr Obama popped up to Albany, New York, with a new gimmick. He unveiled a five-point job-creating “to do” list, which he knows the Republicans in a gridlocked Congress will not enact.

Some people love elections. But data compiled by the redoubtable Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution show that this one is unfolding against a deep gloom. Four recent surveys have found that on average only 28% of Americans are satisfied with the condition of the country, while 70% are dissatisfied. Three recent surveys have found that between 69% and 83% of Americans believe that the country is still in recession (it isn’t), and only half believe that a recovery is under way.

If voters conclude that Mr Obama has failed them on the economy, they will fire him and hire Mitt Romney in November. That is normal. Less normal is how many Americans have come to think that the country is not just passing through a rough patch but is in long-term decline. A survey of 12 swing states found 55% agreeing that the jobs being created in the recovery are of lower quality than those jobs lost during the recession. By a margin of nearly two to one, Americans expect their children’s jobs, salaries and benefits to be worse than their own. Some 35% go so far as to say that America’s best days are behind it.

According to the magazine, this glass-half-full sentiment owes much to the fact that we are in election season, where sharply critical rhetoric coming from both sides of the aisle is serving to accentuate the negative.

In other words, the fact that people feel things are in bad shape -- and getting worse -- is a matter of (mis)perception.

One problem with this view, of course, is that Americans have been feeling that things have been moving in the wrong direction for several years -- that is, before and after the presidential election clown show -- and the so-called economic recovery -- began.

But I guess that's a minor detail.