Visiting Scholar  Arthur C. Brooks

"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."

So lectures a popular bumper sticker in my university-dominated neighborhood. And according to an emerging journalistic narrative of this campaign season, ordinary Americans are indeed outraged--at the Iraq war, at gas prices, and by the fact that their houses are not rising in value. As a July 4 Associated Press headline put it, "Americans' unhappy birthday: 'Too much wrong.'"

One does not do well to question the legitimacy of this alleged anger. Former Texas senator and McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm learned this the hard way. Looking at data showing less economic trouble than he felt the gloomy headlines warranted, he said in an interview on July 9 that the U.S. was a "nation of whiners" and that we are merely in a "mental recession." Within a few days he stepped down from a McCain campaign increasingly worried about a possible backlash from supposedly enraged voters.

The controversy about Mr. Gramm's comments involved whether Americans have the right to be angry. The anger itself is simply assumed to exist. Ironically, this assumption is questionable, and is not supported by the data. . . .

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Arthur C. Brooks is a visiting scholar at AEI. He is the author of Gross National Happiness (Basic Books, 2008) and will assume the presidency of AEI on January 1, 2009.