- New poll finds Utahns evenly split on whether the U.S. lives up to its ideals.
- A majority of Democratic voters said they are not proud to be an American.
- Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis share hopeful messages in response to poll.
Utah resident Ray Wright has witnessed more than a century of American life.
He cheered for the country’s greatest victories. He struggled to reconcile its biggest flaws.
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In good moments, and bad, his evaluation has been the same: Nowhere else would he rather call home.
A new Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll finds a fractured view of American identity.
Utah voters, split by partisanship, are polarized on pride and optimism toward the nation they share.
Citizens are not just conflicted about whether the country currently lives up to its revolutionary ideals.
They are also torn on whether things will get better — or whether America’s best days are long gone.
On Tuesday, ahead of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, Wright turned 102 years old.
He was 2 when America turned 150.
Despite faded senses, his memory of when he realized how lucky he is to be an American is vibrant.
It was 1943. A newly turned 18-year-old Wright sat on a rattling train from Texas bootcamp to New Jersey.
Since his birth in a small Kaysville house, the most exciting thing he had done was join the high school boxing club.
Now he was on his way to Europe.
At the shore of the Atlantic, Wright climbed into the Queen Mary, a repurposed luxury ocean liner.
On one trip in July, it took nearly 17,000 soldiers and crew members to the River Clyde in Scotland.
The “Grey Ghost,” as it was called, still holds the record for the most people ever embarked on a single vessel.
It was so crowded Wright slept in a stairway.
En route to a warring continent, he remembers how he and his fellow young men felt as they crossed the waves.
“I don’t think there was any fear at all. I didn’t have it,” Wright told the Deseret News.
“I didn’t have the fear. I just wanted to go over there and serve my country.”
Wright was stationed at the Burtonwood Airbase, along with 18,500 other service members.
During his time there, “Lancashire’s Detroit” produced more than 15,000 aircraft.
Wright built engines for the B-17 bombers that flew on D-Day and the Bombing of Dresden.
He remembers the joy of learning in England that Germany had surrendered on May 7, 1945.
And the pain of learning his best friend, Forrest Greene, had died in the invasion of Okinawa three days earlier.
It was there, 5,000 miles from Kaysville, where Wright recognized the privilege of being an American.
To him, World War II is not a nostalgic, golden era of American greatness. It is his own story.
The United States of America, he said, continues to be a light to the world and a blessing to its people.
“I love this country,” Wright said. “I’ve been to a few of the other countries; I never found one that compares with it.”
But as the latest poll shows, the memory of many Americans is not so sharp — or convictions so clear.
The politics of the day seem to color voters’ perception of the American project a quarter of a millennium on.
Are Utah voters patriotic?
The poll, conducted among 850 voters by Morning Consult from June 16-22, found Utah divided on the question of whether the U.S. lives up to the ideals of equality and freedom set forth in the Declaration of Independence.
The poll found 49% said definitely or somewhat “yes” and 48% said “not really” or “definitely not.” The share who felt the nation fulfilled its mission rose to 76% for Republicans. It fell to 25% for independents and 21% for Democrats.
For Utah Sen. Mike Lee, the success of self-government is not derailed by its mistakes; it is defined by progress.
“The ideals have worked, and the proof lies in what we are — in what America has become since our founding 250 years ago,” Lee told the Deseret News.“While sometimes it might be two steps forward and one back, we move forward.”
Americans are divided, not with each other but over the role of government, which stirs cynicism when it overreaches, according to Lee. But even then, he “deliberately chooses to believe” that the country is on a positive trajectory.
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Utah voters are much more united on the question of national pride: 75% said they are either extremely proud, very proud or somewhat proud to be an American. Just 15% said they are not very proud, or 6% not proud at all.
Once again, answers diverge widely by partisan affiliation. Whereas 97% of Republicans said they are proud to be an American, 66% of independents and 44% of Democrats said the same — a difference of 53 percentage points.
As someone who has traveled the world, Utah Sen. John Curtis cannot help but feel gratitude for his birthplace. He often says he has never met another nation that would not prefer to be America, even on its very worst day.
That attitude comes with experience, Curtis told the Deseret News, the kind that demands civic duty.
“The more you sacrifice for this country, I think the more you appreciate it,” he said. “And that worries me a little bit, that we have a generation that really has not sacrificed like those who have come before them, for freedom.”
Lifelong political activist Sarah Buck, the organizer of Salt Lake Indivisible, has a very different interpretation.
The poll does not reveal anti-American sentiment, she told the Deseret News, it showcases a democracy in decline.
Buck points to President Donald Trump’s strikes on civilian boats in international waters, the administration’s alleged racial profiling of immigrants and the Supreme Court’s rulings on redistricting, abortion and executive authority.
“There are a lot of things happening that are unprecedented, unchecked and unconstitutional,” she said. “There are many Americans who are proud to be American, but not proud of what we’re doing in spaces of power right now.”
Are Utah voters optimistic?
A generational gap is most evident on whether America’s best days are behind it, or ahead of it.
Voters under 35 are nearly 10 points more likely to say the nation’s peak is in its past.
But the question was a difficult one for voters of all kinds.
While at 45%, the largest share of Utah voters said the future is bright, 39% said it can only get darker.
Pessimism was largely tied to party ID.
Nearly two-thirds of Democrats said America has reached its pinnacle, compared to 43% of independents and 26% of Republicans.
American’s positive outlook often hinges on the news of the day, according to America 250 co-chair Ron Fox.
But there is still an opportunity for solidarity.
Over the course of 50 years, Fox traveled with five U.S. presidents as part of the presidential travel advance team.
He saw firsthand some of the country’s worst moments.
He was there when Sen. Robert F. Kennedy — the leading Democratic presidential candidate — was shot in 1968.
That year also saw the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and large-scale Vietnam War protests.
Fox spoke with President Richard Nixon the day he resigned in 1974 after he paid to spy on Democratic headquarters.
The Watergate scandal precipitated a decadeslong drop in trust toward government — one that has only sped up.
But these dark periods are punctuated by some of the greatest achievements in human history, Fox said.
He marvels at how the U.S. transformed the world by establishing a Constitution and putting a man on the moon.
Americans rally around victories — and tragedies — and it has had its fair share of each, Fox told the Deseret News.
“And I think that we get complacent sometimes when there is peace and prosperity in the land,” he said.
The best thing, Fox said, is to remember what America has been through, and how it comes out the other side better.
After the war, Wright returned to northern Utah, where he worked at the Naval Supply Depot until it closed in 1962.
Later employed as a mechanic at Hill Air Force Base, Wright married twice and raised seven children.
Over the years, he has tried to stay out of partisan debates; he saw too many friends become enemies over politics.
That doesn’t mean he wasn’t paying attention.
Wright lived through the end of segregation, through presidential assassinations and economic stagnation.
But he said a glowing hope stayed constant through it all.
“We went through a lot of turmoil in this country,” Wright said. “We’ve done a lot of bad things. There’s a lot of good.”
“I look around and see what other countries are doing, and I think our country is still the best. And it will be.”
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