Elected in 1996 to serve as President into a new century, Bill Clinton announced a national mood of expectation in his second inaugural address: “It is our great good fortune that time and chance have put us not only at the edge of a new century, in a new millennium, but on the edge of a bright new prospect in human affairs — a moment that will define our course, and our character, for decades to come.” It was a moment, in short, when Americans, used to thinking ahead, were asked intensely about the future. Known for his close attention to polling data in policy making, Clinton responded to a frequently reported categorization of Americans during the 1990s as self-absorbed. Clinton's homespun message in his second inaugural address called on Americans planning their individual destinies to think collectively when he said simply, “[T]he future is up to us.” As the year 2000 approached, American polls repeatedly measured the national “mood” in light of individual beliefs about the future. Gallup, Torrance, Zogby, CNN (Cable News Network), USA Today, ABC News, and the Pew Research Center, among others, polled Americans about their feelings for the impending millennium “event” and their hopes and fears for the next year, generation, and century. Based on the experience of the last turn of the century, many publishers, educators, and politicians encouraged reflections on the century just past as much as the era ahead, but it was a rare poll that actually asked Americans about their view of the past. To be sure, authorities were queried for the greatest events, presidents, books, films, and television shows of the last century, but it was as much a sign of the difference in their historical perspective from the man or woman on the street as it was some national reflective urge.