It was the decade of conformity. We practiced moderation to excess. In the 1950s the sound of the throbbing rhythms of Buddy Holly and his Crickets was just beginning to compete with crooners and Doris Day musicals for American musical tastes. Americans warmed to the grandfatherly Eisenhower and aspired to have kids who were “well-rounded.”

In politics we feared the new A-bomb. With the Great Depression cured by Roosevelt and by World War II, there was little passion for changing the domestic order, little passion for anything. It was a time of bland.

Public opinion polling, in its childhood but now beyond infancy, was more gimmick and entertainment than science. Surveys covered everything, exploring how Americans felt about everything, politics not being a particularly important part. The Gallup poll regularly explored topics such as “Who is your favorite girl singer?”

The Michigan election surveys in 1956 stating “If Negroes are not getting fair treatment in jobs and housing, the government should see to it that they do.” found 61% in favor and 19% opposed. Two years later the balance was 63 to 18. No one noticed the change. In 1958 the Opinion Research Corporation, asking whether people approved a law that guaranteed the right to form labor unions, found the public divided 74% to 11%. Then two years later it was 75 to 9. At about the same time, the Michigan studies found support for government doing something to provide low-cost healthcare moving from about two-thirds to three-fourths in these same years of the Eisenhower administration. Support for greater government involvement in guaranteeing employment moved from 68 to 69 and then to 71% in 1956, 1958, and 1960. Gallup surveys show an uneven trend in acceptance of income tax levels from about 40% in 1956 to about 45% in 1959. The Gallup organization charted similar movements in support of statehood for Alaska and Hawaii, seen at the time as racial issues.

Nobody saw it. But here the 1960s were emerging; it was John Kennedy's New Frontier, but long before Kennedy's 1960 election. Americans were changing how they felt about government. They were seeing problems in America and increasingly looking to government to solve them. That change would lay the groundwork for the New Frontier and then Lyndon Johnson's more ambitious Great Society. This was a button-down era, but its progeny would fuel the youth revolution and the counterculture to come.