This article makes a very good case for why the American economy is on the right track. However, I doubt this is what most respondents were thinking about when

This article makes a very good case for why the American economy is on the right track. However, I doubt this is what most respondents were thinking about when asked about "the direction of the country" (which to me already sounds like a question that biases people to answer in the negative). Brooks talks repeatedly about how the news media has influenced people's perceptions, but the news media he talks about has (from my perspective) spent more time on social issues rather than the economy, so of course there's a discrepancy there. He's tackling a fundamentally different question than the poll he mentioned. Just because America is on the right track economically does not mean that people are wrong to demand more from their country in other failing areas.