One of the perks of being president is commissioning a new rug for the Oval Office. President Bush has recently been telling visitors that he turned the task over to his wife with one admonition: The design should send the message that “an optimist works here.” And the pattern she selected, featuring a burst of sunlike rays, certainly fills the bill.

We thought of the president’s new carpet when we read a recent survey from the Pew Research Center measuring the state of the nation’s happiness. Forty-five percent of Republicans call themselves “very happy,” while only 30 percent of Democrats feel blissful. That happiness gap of 15 percent is a significant margin in a country so evenly divided along partisan lines.