Pollster John Zogby, President and Chief Executive Officer of Zogby International, discussed themes of the upcoming election before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on Thursday. Zogby, who recently published a book, The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report, pointed to 18 to 29 year olds as America’s first generation of global citizens, or “Globals,” as he calls them. According to Zogby, attitudes of that generation are shaped by “the 56 percent of them who have passports.” This age cohort is more likely than any other to say, “‘I’m a citizen of planet earth,’ as opposed to a citizen of the United States,” he said. The group is also least likely to believe “that there is an inherent superiority to American culture over other cultures,” he said. Though the Globals “may not be able to find Darfur on a map,” he said, “what makes them light years ahead of my generation or previous generations is they know that there is a Darfur on the map, and they care about it.”

Zogby said the 2008 presidential campaign has been governed by the theme of “very serious crisis.” Polls show eighty percent of Americans believes the country is headed in the wrong direction. That figure never topped 65 percent even during the peak of the Watergate scandal, Zogby noted. Likewise, 75 percent say the country is in a very serious crisis, a figure that never topped 12 percent during Watergate.

Zogby also said Hurricane Katrina continues to have a major effect on voters’ outlooks. Katrina has become more of a defining moment in American history than the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Zogby argued. As the widespread sense of national unity after the September 11 attacks began to fade, said Zogby, Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath reinforced a “crisis in confidence” in U.S. institutions among the American people.