Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Americans Finally Waking Up?


What?! Americans don’t trust Washington? Who knew?

Yes, the headline is sarcastic (sometimes readers miss that). The Associate Press reports the dog-bites-man news that four out of five Americans don’t trust Washington. Frankly, that seems a little low. I don’t know if I know any Americans who do trust Washington.
“. . . most Americans today have little faith in Washington’s ability to deal with the nation’s problems,” the AP reports. “Public confidence in government is at one of the lowest points in a half century, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans say they don’t trust the federal government and have little faith it can solve America’s ills, the survey found.”
The tone of the story is of the typical “Oh my!” nature, which is how the mainstream press greets news that reflects poorly on the government it so closely identifies with. (Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps?)
But there’s another way to look at this.
“Perhaps the most positive legacy of the Clinton administration will be that it further eroded the public’s trust in the federal government,” write Dwight R. Lee and J.R. Clark. “Trust has declined significantly since the Great Society programs of the Johnson administration. According to University of Michigan surveys, the number of people who responded that the federal government does what is right ‘always’ or ‘most of the time’ has dropped from 75 percent in 1964 to less than 30 percent in the mid-1990s.
“Our view is that this decline in trust is a good thing because it mirrors rather accurately the performance of a government that has become less trustworthy.”
What’s the basis for “trust” anyway? As Lee and Clark note, “charisma and emotion can trump substance in politics. Registering support at the polls for a superficially attractive candidate or a superficially compassionate proposal allows a voter to identify with the glamorous or feel virtuous with little concern about cost or effectiveness.”
Hope and change. Emotional stuff, huh? The promise changes folks’ hopes. Then reality bites. No wonder trust is lost.

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