Americans are eager for change in 2008 election

Many say money being spent in Iraq should be spent here.

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

DES MOINES, Iowa — A year before they choose a new government for the post-Bush era, Americans are desperate to change the country’s course.

Most lean left, a U.S. population more liberal than at any time in a generation, hungering to end the Iraq war, turn inward and use the federal government to solve problems at home.

Still, some want to turn farther right, demanding that the country fence off its southern border, expel illegal immigrants and rein in a federal government grown fat under a Republican government they now dismiss as incompetent.

One thing almost all Americans tend to agree on: They’re deeply unhappy with the way things are going in the United States and eager to move on. There’s virtually no appetite to extend the Bush era, as there was at the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency in 1988 or Bill Clinton’s in 2000.

The yearning to chart a new course is national:

UJust 1 in 5 Americans think the country is going in the right direction, the worst outlook since the Reagan-Bush era ended in 1992.

ULess than one-third of Americans like the way the current President Bush is handling his job, among the lowest ratings in half a century. The people had similarly dismal opinions just before they ended the Jimmy Carter era in 1980, the Kennedy-Johnson years in 1968 and the Roosevelt-Truman era in 1952.

UThe ranks of people who want the government to help the poor have risen sharply since the early 1990s — dramatically among independents, but even among Republicans.

In Iowa

The public mood is evident in Iowa, the heartland state that votes first for major-party presidential nominees and a pivotal swing state in the last two presidential elections.

“People are very unhappy, very unsettled,” said Megan Phillips, a teacher from Centerville, a town of about 6,000 in southern Iowa.

Phillips once considered herself a proud Republican. Small-town. Anti-abortion. Pro-gun.

But she soured on Bush’s landmark education overhaul, the No Child Left Behind Act. And she turned against the war — and Bush — with a passion that underscores how deeply the national unity that rose up after Sept. 11 has given way to cynicism.

“People don’t trust anything coming out of Washington,” she said. “When Bush says we’re winning the war in Iraq, I say, ‘Oh really?’ The weapons of mass destruction weren’t there. Why are we still there? We want our people to come home. There are so many things at home that need to be taken care of.”

As the cost of the war continues to rise, that’s one big common refrain: Stop spending money in Iraq, and spend it at home. It’s feeding a resurgence of support for liberal notions of using the federal government in ways that had been in decline for more than a decade.

“We need to fix things,” said Mary Howell, an independent from the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale. “We need to fix health care. We can spend billions in Iraq. But we have people at home who need help.”

“Things are a mess,” said George Wagner, an auto mechanic from Homestead, west of Iowa City. “Manufacturing jobs are disappearing. Big business is running Washington. The little guy gets left behind.”

Wagner, a libertarian, also wants the country to look homeward.

“We’re not the policeman of the world. We should make friends with the people overseas we can do business with, secure the borders and take care of the people at home. Take care of the infrastructure. Older folks, medical stuff. If we stop spending so much overseas, we could give that money to churches to take care of people.”