Ben J. Wattenberg, who brought an unusual sense of good cheer and optimism to the social-science and polling research he undertook on the United States, died last night. He was a jaunty guy who loved this country and sought in ways both high (as in a few articles for this magazine), middlebrow (the PBS programs he was always hungry to host), and populist (through newspaper columns over decades) to evangelize for its essential health. He was one of the Democrats in the late 1960s and early 1970s who committed himself to fighting those who wanted to divert his party into anti-American tributaries through the founding of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, a group that had little success but did prove prophetic in insisting that only a move to the center, a la Bill Clinton, would save the party from itself. His most notable later book, Values Matter Most, became a hot topic of discussion when Clinton called Wattenberg and discussed it and his own failings in 1995. Baruch dayan emet.