Distrust of government near record level; Americans believe political candidates out for themselves: poll

Nothing is certain in this world, “except death and taxes,” Benjamin Franklin famously wrote in 1789.

More than 200 years later, a third item can be safely added to that list: Americans’ distrust in the federal government.

Faith in elected leaders and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., began tumbling downward more than 50 years ago. Over the past two decades it’s leveled off – only because it can’t go much lower.

Only 20% of Americans believe the federal government can be trusted “to do the right thing just about always or most of the time,” Pew Research Center reported this week, just ahead of the live House committee hearings into the January 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

That’s almost exactly the same as Pew’s poll results seven years ago. In 2015, deep into President Barack Obama’s second term in office, only 3% of Americans said they could trust the federal government to do what is right “just about always,” while 16% said they had such trust “most of the time.”

The latest Pew survey found that 65% of respondents believe most political candidates seek to use their public office “to serve their own personal interests.”

Career federal employees don’t come out too much better. Faith in them has fallen nearly 10% in the past four years, with 52% of poll respondents saying they have “a great deal or fair amount of confidence” in federal workers.

It wasn’t always this way. Back in 1958, when faith in the country’s leaders and institutions was first put to the American public using modern polling practices, 73% of Americans said they trusted the federal government most of the time.

Within a decade, with the arrival of the Vietnam War and social upheaval, that trust began to collapse. The Watergate scandal and the stagflation of the 1970s pushed it down even further, to 26% by the end of President Jimmy Carter’s term in office.

There have been two, brief respites from this pervasive half century of cynicism. During the boom times of the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was president, public trust jumped up to more than 40%. And after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, trust in government leaped from 29% (in a March 2001 Los Angeles Times survey) to 64% (in a similar Washington Post poll in late September).

That post-9/11 spike quickly evaporated, and trust in the federal government has remained exceptionally low for two decades.

“Republicans are less likely than Democrats to favor a major role for government in most areas,” Pew Research Center writes of its latest poll, but it also points out that Democrats’ and Republicans’ trust in the federal government fluctuates depending on which party holds the White House.

And for years now, polls have shown that supporters of both parties have little belief in Washington, D.C.’s ability – or, increasingly, even desire – to solve the country’s problems.

Of course, being suspicious of elected leaders is nothing new in the United States.

“They’re not even Americans, these so-called Democrats and Republicans!” the demagogic priest Charles Coughlin told his large radio audience in the 1930s.

In 2022, Americans continue to believe more political decisions should be made closer to voters, with 34% saying they’re “extremely or very concerned that the federal government is doing too much on issues better left to state governments; another 35% are somewhat concerned about this.”

And despite Americans’ lack of faith in Washington, D.C., a significant majority of respondents believes the federal government should have a “major role” in strengthening the economy, keeping the country safe from terrorism, managing immigration and responding to natural disasters.

Poll respondents were most likely to list “foreign policy” and “national security” when asked what the federal government does well.

Pew Research Center polled 5,074 American adults in April and May for its latest report.

— Douglas Perry

dperry@oregonian.com

@douglasmperry