Mistrust of government was the topic this morning when William Galston, a Brookings Institution scholar, appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. He discussed his opinion piece in the Financial Times on Wednesday.
Galston wrote and spoke about the attitude of Americans toward their government, as reflected in a CBS News/New York Times poll in February. In the FT article, he commented:
Only 19 per cent of respondents – near the record low – said they trusted the government to do what is right all or most of the time. Only 29 per cent thought they had much influence on what the government does, while 78 per cent believed the government to be run by a few big interests, not for the benefit of the people.
Suspicion of government goes back to the founding of the Republic, Galston said. But in the era that began with the New Deal through the early Johnson administration, trust of government was high, reaching 76% in 1964. Then, the government enacted large programs, including social security, banking regulations, civil rights, and Medicare for older Americans. But following the Vietnam War and Watergate, trust in government plummeted to 36% in 1974 and stood at just 17% when President Obama took office.
This morning the callers to the C-SPAN program confirmed the abysmal assessment of our government. Few spoke on behalf of government; most spoke very skeptically, and some decried it with vitriol.
Although Galston didn’t make precisely this connection, I think it’s almost certain that distrust of government is the major cause of political polarization and impotence in Washington and the nation at large.
Deep distrust of what government says and does causes uncertainty and confusion. Lacking leaders whom they believe, people turn to their predispositions and biases, especially the most strident and partisan. Polarization and dissension grow and the ability to compromise—and enact compromises—fails. Impotence and paralysis take hold, as the government loses the ability to govern.
Last month Fareed Zakaria, the CNN commentator, spoke about the huge financial challenges facing the country. He used the counterexample of one official who acted decisively and restored some trust in government. Paul Volker, the former Fed chairman, carried through the deeply unpopular tightening of credit that curtailed inflation in the early 1980s. Zakaria spoke about a similar need to enact “deeply painful” measures to fix the nation’s current economic woes, like raising taxes and limiting entitlement benefits. He asked whether politicians today were capable of taking necessary difficult, unpopular positions, as Volker did.
Government will not be able to carry out essential changes without holding the trust of the people. And trust will not come unless government carries out essential changes. It is a desperate cycle that the leaders of our nation must break. They must act and succeed. The people cannot do it themselves. Only when our leaders succeed in achieving what they must, will they merit the confidence that Paul Volker once earned.
Whether we trust them or not, our fate now is in the hands of our leaders and our government.