- 33 percent of respondents have “a lot or some confidence.”
- 35 percent have “just a little” confidence in the government.
- 31 percent claim to have “no confidence at all,” which is the highest percentage expressing no confidence in the nearly two decades that various news agencies have been asking the question.
An interesting wrinkle in the data shows that the only group of people whose confidence in government has increased is African Americans. Here’s how those numbers have changed over the past decade:
- African Americans’ confidence has risen 10 points.
- Latinos’ confidence has dropped 16 points.
- Whites’ confidence has dropped 22 points (the sharpest decline was 25 points among non-college educated whites).
Despite low confidence, Americans want more government involvement in facing our biggest challenges
As I’ve argued before, just because government – and almost every other institution, ranging from businesses to community organizations (like our churches) – has let us down , doesn’t mean that we don’t need all of these institutions working together to solve our biggest challenges. The survey found that respondents support more government involvement in addressing the following challenges:
- Developing new energy sources
- Improving public schools
- Making college education more affordable
- Reducing poverty
- Ensuring access to affordable health care
Despite low confidence in the government, the survey finds that 62 percent of Americans say that their “priority is making government more efficient and more effective, not reducing its size.” Most Americans realize that only through partnership with an effective and efficient government will we be able to find solutions to our biggest challenges.
Americans don’t trust business either
As I alluded to above, Americans haven’t only lost confidence in the federal government but also in the private sector. As the report notes:
“Nor is the public sector alone viewed more critically by the public. In fact, public opinion toward business corporations has turned downward even more sharply than we see for various levels of government. From January 2007 to today, favorable opinion toward corporations has declined by 18 percentage points (from 57 percent to 39 percent), almost twice the decline experienced by the federal government over the same period (10 points).”
Furthermore, it’s telling to compare what percentage of adults hold favorable feelings toward our various public and private institutions:
- Local government – 58 percent
- State government – 44 percent
- Business corporations – 39 percent
- Federal government – 35 percent
- Congress – 28 percent
The above findings remind me that the anger expressed by the TEA party and others about the federal government is only one symptom of a larger malady, which is Americans’ widespread crisis of confidence in most of our public and private institutions. No one – despite nearly comparable distrust of business – is advocating for subjecting business to the sort of “starve the beast” tactics that movement conservatives like Grover Norquist have taken toward government. Here’s what Norquist said about government on NPR in 2001:
“I don’t want to abolish government, I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
I know that Norquist’s violent reworking – echoed to tragic effect by the likes of Glenn Beck – of Reagan’s first inaugural address where he said,” in this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem,” is like an adrenaline shot to the heart for an important right-leaning voting bloc. I also acknowledge, and have written before, that government must be more efficient and effective in solving our problems. There is waste and fraud that must be rooted out. From the survey, here are measures for improving government that most Americans support:
- Eliminating inefficient programs and redirecting support to the most cost-efficient programs.
- Carefully evaluating the performance of individual programs and agencies, and making that information available to the public.
- Using more modern management methods and information technologies.
These three things are easier said than done, but if we are indeed the greatest country in the world then we should be capable of acting like clear-eyed grownups and make these reforms happen.
The good news
The good news from this survey is that the Norquists and Becks of the world speak to a vocal minority (only 23 percent of Americans believe that the federal government would be ineffective no matter what). In this global, interconnected world, with systems (industrial, financial, informational and militarial) too complex for everyday people to monitor, we cannot afford to drown government in the bathtub.
In fact, as I’ve argued before, government agencies need to serve as the lifeguards monitoring the waters so that we can swim through our lives – starting businesses, raising families, playing in mediocre bar bands – confident that the waters are safe and well-primed so future generations can be successful too.
Most Americans (62 percent) understand that even if government has failed us in the past, we cannot solve our biggest problems without one that works. It’s time now for those of us who value cooperation, partnership and serious discussion of America’s challenges to articulate our vision of what America must become: a country where a reasonable, informed citizenry; an effective, efficient government; and responsible businesses come together to get to work on the big issues that face us.
Nick Voges is the blogger behind NMPolitics.net’s Zeitgeist. E-mail him at nick@nmpolitics.net.