State of Nation on Sept. 11: How Things Have Changed

Four Thursdays ago, without warning, a potentially disastrous event struck the northeastern United States: The electrical power grid abruptly failed.

Within moments, millions of Americans shared a single grim thought: Was this a terrorist attack -- another Sept. 11?

In Manhattan, the question flashed across the mind of Dr. Susan Blank, a physician in the New York City Department of Health who worked in an emergency unit near the collapsing World Trade Center two years ago. “These days, when something unexpected happens, you think about the unthinkable really early,” she said.

In Washington, the same thought flashed across the mind of Matthew E. Broderick, director of the Homeland Security Department’s command center, who triggered the agency’s crisis plan -- the first full-scale alert in its eight-month history.

And at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, the thought flashed across the mind of Maj. Gen. Craig R. McKinley, the air defense commander for the continental United States, who sent two F-16 fighter jets into the air near the nation’s capital -- just in case.

In a strange coincidence, one of the pilots, Maj. Dean Eckman, was also one of the two who flew over Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, with orders to shoot down any passenger jet that approached the capital.

Two years after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, life in America has seemingly returned to normal in most respects. The economy has largely recovered from the shock of the attacks; the public has taken new security measures in stride; even the White House is letting tourists in again.

At the airports, some seem to have forgotten Sept. 11 entirely; from June through August, the Transportation Security Administration seized a record 1.8 million “prohibited items” from passengers -- including 6,140 box cutters, the weapon used by the hijackers.

But underneath, in more subtle ways, the painful knowledge of Sept. 11 is still imprinted on the nation’s psyche. Polls show that most Americans expect terrorists to attack U.S. territory again; many are worried about their own safety.

Some, especially in New York and Washington, have taken measures to prepare for the next emergency. Marisa Mohan, an office manager in a Manhattan skyscraper, doesn’t wear high heels to work anymore; she wears running shoes, to get out of the building quicker. Bevi Chagnon, a graphics designer who lives just outside Washington, keeps a suitcase packed by her front door in case the region is evacuated.

“The threat of terrorism is now part of the fabric of American life,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. “People are still worried, and that fear never really goes away.... It’s an important element in public opinion now. It’s a quiet fear rather than the active fear of two years ago.”

That elevated fear level, even if intangible most of the time, has real consequences. It affects economic behavior: Air travel and overseas tourism are still down, but spending on home improvements is up. It affects political attitudes: President Bush is still riding the wave of increased prestige he won after Sept. 11, and Democratic candidates for president must prove their mettle as potential commanders in chief.

And it affects the way New Yorkers and other Americans deal with adversity -- and with each other. America’s new nervousness went through a real-world test Aug. 14, the steamy afternoon when the power went out in the Northeast. The electrical system didn’t pass, but the citizenry mostly did.

Blank was in her office in Lower Manhattan when the lights went out -- just as she had been on the day of the attacks.

“Before 9/11, if there was an event, if the subway ground to a halt, you’d sort of hang with it,” she said. “But now, when the lights go out, you jump straight to ‘This is terrible,’ rather than ‘This is just a power failure.’ I was surprised at the number of people who completely lost their wits because of the memory of 9/11. Some of my staff broke down crying.”

For medical professionals, she said, “9/11 was easy; there were people in front of us who needed medical attention. We knew what to do. This time, we didn’t know what to do at first. We didn’t even have a radio that worked on batteries.”

But by day’s end, she said, anxiety had given way to an almost giddy sense of escape. She remembers driving home to Queens with her husband -- and a back seat full of colleagues -- through streets that seemed strangely happy.

“Once we knew it wasn’t terrorism, it was borderline festive,” she said. “There was a palpable sense of relief: This is just a blackout! It’s a pain in the ass, but we’re not going to die!”

Others had much the same reaction. “One of the things we learned on 9/11 was that people in New York look after each other,” Mohan said. “We all have emergency backup plans now ... but we also know that we will probably survive.”

Indeed, New York’s gritty reaction to the attacks changed the city’s image in the eyes of many Americans. Polls found big jumps in the number who said New York was “a good place to visit,” and in one survey, 64% even said they now think of New Yorkers as “friendly.”

Social scientists say Sept. 11 had a similar effect on Americans’ trust in each other across the entire country, but most now believe the afterglow has faded.

“The initial effect was to give a huge boost to patriotism, trust in government and trust in other people, including trust across racial lines,” said Robert D. Putnam, the Harvard professor whose book “Bowling Alone” argued three years ago that Americans were drifting away from community activities.

“We knew all along that it was not likely to last,” he said. “The question in this case was whether it might be possible to capitalize on our shared response to 9/11 and make it a little more lasting.”

The last such occasion, he said, was World War II, which had a lasting effect because almost all Americans participated. But Sept. 11, he said, did not produce the same kind of durable response.

“The government hasn’t done everything it could to promote civic engagement,” he said. “What actually have we been asked to do? Having our taxes cut doesn’t qualify as a sacrifice.... But it’s not only the job of the government. I would give all of us about a C minus.”

William A. Galston, a professor at the University of Maryland who was an advisor to President Clinton, said most Americans expected further large-scale terrorist attacks.

“There is evidence that people are nicer to each other” since the attacks, he said. “There is evidence that parents are focusing more on the basics of family life. But this was an assault on the entire body of citizens, and it called for a revival of active citizenship. And I see no evidence of that.”

Fear of terrorism has had a measurable effect on political attitudes too.

“Americans have lost the sense of invulnerability that peaked during the 10 years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of global terrorism,” Galston said. “And that fear has changed the tone, and to some extent the substance, of American politics.”

For example, he noted, before the attacks most female voters opposed increased defense spending. But “9/11 had the effect of transforming defense into a family safety issue,” he said. “There is still a gender gap on defense spending, but a lot of women were strongly in favor of the war in Iraq.”

“Foreign policy is more important now than it was before 9/11,” said Kohut. “The public has a greater sense that the world is dangerous, that the world can reach out and bite us. So there’s more internationalism, more of a sense that we should be involved in the world.

“That’s still an important factor in President Bush’s standing. Bush gets his highest ratings from the public on his conduct of the war on terrorism.”

Still, Kohut noted, as the 2001 attacks have receded in time, other concerns have shouldered terrorism aside. Since the fall of Baghdad in April, polls have found that most Americans consider the economy the nation’s most important issue, followed by the war in Iraq, then terrorism. As for the economy, the effect of Sept. 11 turned out to be considerably less than initially feared.

Two years later, “you can’t tell the net impact,” said Roger M. Kubarych, an economist at HVB Americas, the New York outpost of Germany’s Hypovereins Bank. “The U.S. is in a long-term adjustment to the high-tech bubble and its collapse, and that’s the main factor. Business investment is very low compared to what it was [in 2000]. 9/11 didn’t really cause that.... “

“I think the biggest effect was that it totally changed the budget picture of the United States,” said William C. Dudley, chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs in New York.

“Before 9/11 we had a Social Security surplus that needed to be protected; after 9/11, it was obvious that it was an emergency, and we were going to spend that money. Once you broke that dam, Congress seemed to ask, ‘Why stop there?’ And now we have a $500-billion deficit.

“I personally think 9/11 was a more traumatic event psychologically than economically,” he said in a telephone interview from the firm’s headquarters in Manhattan, about a quarter of a mile from the trade center site. “People are definitely more twitchy than they were before.”