‘What Do You Think Is the Most Important Problem Facing This Country Today?’

With the economy humming along and
United States troops withdrawn from
major wars, Americans cited a variety
of domestic problems as the most
important. The top response was
dissatisfaction with government, a
sentiment Mr. Trump harnessed during
his populist campaign.
Barack Obama entered his second term
after a major budget showdown with
Congress and with another fiscal
deadline, the federal debt ceiling,
approaching. Mr. Obama regularly
criticized Republicans for using the debt
limit as a bargaining chip to cut
spending.
Mr. Obama entered his first term during
the heart of the Great Recession. During
his first major speech before Congress,
he promoted the just-passed stimulus
package and the need for the
government to further intervene in the
financial system.
George W. Bush began his second term
two years into the war in Iraq. While he
did not mention the country by name in
his second inaugural address, he focused
heavily on the importance of securing
America by spreading freedom and
democracy.
Like the start of Mr. Trump’s
presidency, the beginning of Mr. Bush’s
first term lacked a major war or
economic crisis, and Americans cited a
variety of important problems. At the
top of the list was moral decline in
society, which had increasingly become
a concern during the scandals of the
presidency of Bill Clinton.
Crime was front and center in
Americans’ minds during the debate
over the Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act, which Bill Clinton
signed in 1994. It was still the most-
cited problem by the start of Mr.
Clinton’s second term in 1997, though
its share had decreased.
Mr. Clinton came into office in 1991 in
the midst of a recession and a growing
unemployment rate, which reached 7.8
percent by mid-1992. But a financial
boom soon followed, and by the end of
his presidency, very few people still
listed the economy as the key problem.
In his first address to a joint session of
Congress, George Bush described his
plans to wage a war on drugs “on all
fronts.” Drugs were cited in more than
a quarter of responses in May of 1989
and then in two-thirds of responses
later that year.
After years of military buildup and an
arms race with the Soviet Union, Ronald
Reagan entered his second term pushing
for an anti-ballistic missile defense
system that he said would “render
nuclear weapons obsolete.”
Mr. Reagan began his first term in
office in the midst of a recession, with
the inflation rate at a whopping 11.4
percent (it had come down slightly from
13.6 percent in June of 1979) and
unemployment at 7.5 percent.
Concerns about energy – high prices and
depletion of resources – bubbled up
several times during Jimmy Carter's
presidency. About a third of responses
cited the problem during the oil crisis of
1979.
When Gerald Ford assumed the
presidency in August 1974, the nation
was in the midst of a recession, and the
inflation rate was rising rapidly. An
early attempt to address the problem, a
public campaign called “Whip Inflation
Now,” did not last for long.
As the Watergate scandal intensified,
President Richard Nixon gave his first
address to the nation on the topic in
April of his second term, after two of his
top aides resigned over the cover-up.
Mr. Nixon won his first presidential
election in 1968, the year that American
troops in Vietnam peaked at more than
500,000. In his speech accepting the
Republican nomination that year, he
promised to bring the war to an end.
Nearly a year after Lyndon B. Johnson
signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
just two months into his first full term,
civil rights activists held a march from
Selma to Montgomery, Ala., bringing
voting rights to the forefront of
Americans’ minds.
Foreign affairs dominating the list of
most important problems when John F.
Kennedy took office, primarily the
threat of war with the Soviet Union and
the threat of communism.
At the start of his second term, Dwight
D. Eisenhower also faced several
problems abroad, including the growing
influence of the Soviet Union in the
Middle East. No polls are available from
the beginning of his first term in 1953,
though one from 1952 shows
overwhelming concern about the
Korean War.
Harry S. Truman began his first full
term in office four years after the end
of World War II and the formation of
the United Nations. Americans were still
concerned about the threat of war and
keeping the peace.
The United States officially entered
World War II in December of 1941,
nearly a year into Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s third term. A poll the month
before reflected Americans’ concerns
about the nation’s defenses and
involvement in the war.
Gallup began asking the “most
important problem” question in 1935,
in the midst of the Great Depression
and two and a half years into Mr.
Roosevelt’s 12-year presidency. The
Works Progress Administration, which
created millions of jobs in public works
projects, was established earlier that
year.
Gallup conducted its surveys using in-person
interviews until the late 1980s, when it
transitioned to telephone surveys. More recent
polls are based on a mix of cellphone and
landline interviews. In some cases, respondents
have been allowed multiple answers.
In its early days, Gallup used “quota sampling”
to ensure that it surveyed respondents who were
representative of the population as a whole,
according to an interview with Alec Gallup, a
former chairman of the poll. Today the
organization uses random sampling and weights
the data based on United States demographics.
Source: Gallup data via the Roper Center for
Public Opinion Research
POLITICS
‘What Do You Think Is
the Most Important
Problem Facing This
Country Today?’
By GREGOR AISCH and
ALICIA PARLAPIANO FEB. 27, 2017
Since the presidency of Franklin D.
Roosevelt, the Gallup polling
organization has asked Americans an
open-ended question: “What do you
think is the most important problem
facing this country today?”
As Donald J. Trump prepares for his
first major address to the nation on
Tuesday, he has a unique set of issues to
tackle. But there is not one singular
issue that is dominating the American
consciousness.
February 2017
“For too long, a small group
in our nation’s capital has
reaped the rewards of
government while the
people have borne the
cost. Washington
flourished, but the people
did not share in its wealth.”
Donald J.
Trump in his
inaugural
address on
Jan. 20, 2017
January 2013
“So while I’m willing to
compromise and find
common ground over how
to reduce our deficits,
America cannot afford
another debate with this
Congress about whether or
not they should pay the
bills they’ve already racked
up.”
Barack Obama
in a news
conference on
Jan. 14, 2013
February 2009
“But while the cost of action
will be great, I can assure
you that the cost of
inaction will be far greater,
for it could result in an
economy that sputters
along for not months or
years, but perhaps a
decade.”
Barack Obama
in his first
address to
Congress on
Feb. 24, 2009
January 2005
“Our country has accepted
obligations that are difficult
to fulfill, and would be
dishonorable to abandon.
Yet because we have acted
in the great liberating
tradition of this nation, tens
of millions have achieved
their freedom.”
George W. Bush
in his second
inaugural
address on
Jan. 20, 2005
January 2001
“Our public interest depends
on private character, on
civic duty and family bonds
and basic fairness, on
uncounted, unhonored acts
of decency, which give
direction to our freedom.”
George W. Bush
in his first
inaugural
address on
Jan. 20, 2001
January 1997
“Serious crime has dropped
five years in a row. The
key has been community
policing. We must finish
the job of putting 100,000
community police on the
streets of the United
States.”
Bill Clinton in
his State of the
Union address
on Feb. 4, 1997
January 1993
“Our immediate priority
must be to create jobs,
create jobs now. Some
people say, ‘Well, we’re in
a recovery, and we don't
have to do that.’ Well, we
all hope we’re in a
recovery, but we’re sure
not creating new jobs.”
Bill Clinton in
his first
address to
Congress on
Feb. 17, 1993
May 1989