The America Inherited by Gerald Ford

> More than one out of every four Americans of voting age believes that his or her life-style and well-being are in serious jeopardy because of inflation and other current economic conditions.

> Nearly one in three is extremely upset by the direction in which the nation's society is heading, feels powerless to change things, and complains that the "wrong people" are getting the favorable breaks.

> Some 28% express a keen interest in politics and follow politics closely. Far fewer (13%) actively participate on a day-to-day basis in influencing the country's political and legislative process in one way or another.

> Slightly more than half now qualify as conservatives, though what they mean by the label varies widely.

These findings were drawn from a study of public attitudes conducted for TIME in mid-July by Yankelovich, Skelly & White, Inc., the New York-based public-opinion research firm. For comparison purposes, a similar study had been made in late April and early May. The report is the first of a series called TIME Soundings, which will monitor a number of political indicators as the country approaches the 1976 presidential election. (The methods and definitions used are spelled out in the box on the following two pages.) The report also provides a sharp profile of the America that Gerald Ford inherited upon Rich ard Nixon's abdication as President and tells much about the political scene confronting the new Administration. The key findings:

I ECONOMIC DISTRESS

An increasing number of Americans sense a real threat to their economic security if inflation is not brought under control. Some 70% of all those questioned mentioned it as the No. 1 problem facing the country, far outstripping Watergate and other issues. Only a relatively small minority considered them selves to be in economic distress, but that minority is growing.

Last spring 23% of those surveyed believed that they were in deep trouble financially, 43% said that they were managing to cope with rising prices by trimming expenditures, and 34% reported that they had scarcely felt inflation's effects. By July the picture had changed. Fewer people found themselves able to cope (39%), and more people felt serious economic distress (28%). They are the group whose politics are most likely to be affected by changes in economic conditions in the future.

A quarter of those in the economically distressed group are under 25, while 49% are under 35. The economically distressed also tended to be blue-collar workers (53%) and married with children (51%). About three-fifths have incomes of $10,000 or more a year. Two out of three label themselves as Democrats, compared with 55% of the population as a whole, and more voted for George McGovern (40%) than for Richard Nixon (33%) in 1972.

II SOCIAL RESENTMENT

The last dark days of the Watergate scandal appeared to add new impetus to the growing disaffection in America. Yankelovich found that 32% of those polled--up 5 percentage points in three months--were motivated by a strong sense of social resentment that was likely to influence their politics. It is resentment, rather than economic conditions, that binds the group together. Indeed, only a third found themselves in economic distress, as defined by TIME Soundings.

For purposes of analysis, the two groups were labeled resentful and non-resentful Americans, somewhat of a necessary oversimplification: obviously, their attitudes often overlap. The resentful tend to have less than a high school education (51% v. 31% of the nonresentful), to have blue-collar jobs (53% v. 39%), earn less than $10,000 a year (52% v. 34%), to be Southerners (41% v. 29%) and to live in small towns or rural areas (50% v. 37%).

Views that distinguish the resentful group include: a belief that there is no justice for the poor (47% v. 18%), that people in power are not as trustworthy as they used to be (82% v. 57%), that Government is taking people's freedom away (62% v. 32%), that too much attention is being paid to minority groups (48% v. 41%) and that the state of morals in the country is bad and getting worse (73% v. 38%).

Two-thirds of the socially resentful are Democrats, but unlike voters in economic distress, they cast their ballots for Nixon (43%) over McGovern (30%) in 1972. But 38% said they would have preferred George Wallace if he had run for the presidency.

Ill CONSERVATISM

The survey confirmed the widespread belief that the U.S. political axis now tilts toward the right, but only slightly. Some 29% of those polled called themselves conservatives. Another 23% did not use that label but shared essentially the same views as those who think of themselves as conservative. They can be considered to be moderates who lean conservative.

The pollsters found that most Americans now connect the word conservative more with social morality than with political ideology. Such traditional benchmarks as attitudes toward capitalism and big business no longer help much to define the country politically. While three out of four of the conservative majority said that they were willing to make sacrifices to preserve the free enterprise system, 54% expressed anger and hostility toward big business--as did 58% of the nonconservatives.

The slight conservative majority is far from homogeneous. Its members are bound together by many traditional values but separated into what could be called the more classical (61%) and more populist (39%) constituencies by the latter group's angry feeling that they have been left out of the American mainstream. Indeed, almost two-thirds of the Americans who qualified as socially resentful are also part of the conservative majority. For purposes of analysis, they were called resentful conservatives.

The two groups differ demographically. The classical conservatives are more apt to have college educations (23% v. 11% of the resentful group), professional or white-collar jobs (35% v. 19%), working wives (31% v. 22%), annual incomes of $15,000 or more (30% v. 12%) and live in the West (17% v. 6%) but not in the South (36% v. 49%).

Both groups share some views beyond the five basic, defining tenets. Among other things, about 80% of each group agree that right to private property is sacred (v. 58% of the nonconservatives). More than half of each believe that people in authority should be shown more respect (v. 29% of the nonconservatives), and more than half of each agree that too much attention is being paid to minorities (v. 34% of the nonconservatives).

But the two groups of conservatives disagree on many matters. For example, far more of the resentful conservatives tend to blame the country for many of their troubles (42% v. 11% of the nonresentful), believe there is no justice in the U.S. for poor people (46% v. 16%), no longer trust the people in power as much as they used to (86% v. 56%), and believe that the Federal Government is gradually taking away Americans' basic freedoms (63% v. 35%). Further, the resentful conservatives were less likely to be registered Republicans (24% v. 38% of the classical conservatives and 25% of the country's registered voters as a whole).

Because of these striking dissimilarities, the Yankelovich analysts concluded that the two groups of conservatives are unlikely to vote as a bloc. Far from sticking together because of the conservative tenets that they share, the groups are more likely to split along the lines --and issues--of the degree of their social resentment.

IV POLITICAL INTEREST ACTIVISM

Some 28% of those polled were found to have a high interest in politics, while 44% were recorded as having moderate interest and another 28% showed low interest.

Compared with those with moderate or low interest in politics, the people who expressed high interest were more likely to be men (53% v. 41% of the low-interest group) and college graduates (21% v. 3%). They tended also to be white and middle-aged or older. Non-whites comprise only 9% of the high-interest group but 19% of the low-interest group. Only 29% of those with high interest in politics were under 35 years of age (compared with 42% of the moderate-interest and 46% of the low-interest groups), and 47% were 50 and older.

Nearly three out of five people who were polled either pay no attention to the political process or do no more than vote. Some 28% occasionally try to influence the country's political and legislative process, but only 13% do so frequently enough to be considered political activists.

The political activists tended to come from the upper strata of U.S. society. Some 43% of the activists earn over $15,000 a year, compared with only 22% of the nonactivists. The activists more often come from professional and executive backgrounds (42% v. 12% of the nonactivists), live in the big cities and suburbs (67% v. 52%) and are neither very young nor very old. Only 8% of the activists are under 25 years of age, while 4% are 65 or older; some 21% of the nonactivists are under 25, and 18% are 65 or older. Among other things the next Soundings will report whether there is an upswing in interest and activism now that the Watergate stigma has been removed from politics.

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