Everbody has their own opinion of what the "right direction" is for this country. Even if you ask a hundred thousand people what their opinion is, they're all going to be different. That 81% number is meaningless.
its even more than that though; its the questions they ask in these 'polls' ..
remember the whole "68% of the country is against the war" meme? the radio guys got the polling questions and realized the questions were just all skewed. where they got that 68% was from this question: "If the president lied to get us into the Iraq war, would you support him?"
of course, most thinking people would say no .. but they (MSM news who needed a fake headline that day) extrapolated it into a major, major story that tried to make the rest of us believe the war was a mistake.