Illustration by Eva Fong.
Distrust in government is healthy
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The federal government has been viewed differently amongst many American citizens. Some view the federal government as being a compassionate entity that does everything it can to help the American people. Others view it as an intrusive entity that cannot manage anything well. The latter seems to be the growing majority since the turn of the century, which can be a good thing since it adds healthy skepticism to every voter.
As 2015 concluded, Pew Research polls have indicated that trust in the federal government has averaged 19 percent, which came down from 49 percent just one month after the 9/11 attacks. Since 2001, the American people have witnessed 9/11 attacks, undeclared wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Great Recession and its slow recovery, the poor rollout of Medicare Part D and the Affordable Care Act, and the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria; the American people definitely should be skeptical about the federal government.
Even before the turn of the century, the federal government has been caught doing some distasteful things. According to Gallup polls, trust in the federal government started tanking during the Vietnam War. With the media depicting scenes of the war, as well as daily death tolls, movements to call for the end of the Vietnam War began to coalesce. What really caused the trust in government to fall apart was the release of the Pentagon Papers, with the New York Times declaring that the Johnson Administration “systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress.” To add insult to injury, the Watergate scandal occurred just three years later. This has brought up a question that can still ring true today, “If these are the things we know the government has done, what are the other things the government is doing that we don’t know the government has done?” As a result, there are more people who do not trust the federal government than those who do.
Viewing the federal government as imperfect provides a more realistic aspect of the federal government itself. Governments are run by people, and the cliche that nobody is perfect should definitely apply to figures of authority. What is unfortunate about being human is that we are naturally greedy beings, so it would not be such a good thing to give humans power to control our lives. Just like people, the government would deliver a poorer quality of service when they take on too many duties. Allowing ourselves to view the federal government as human provides a stronger argument to restrict the powers that the federal government has gained since the end of World War 2.
Both the Democratic Party and Republican Party hold some level of distrust of the federal government, but for different reasons. The Democratic Party does not trust the federal government with wars, while the Republican Party does not trust the federal government with the economy. Politicians and people from both sides of the political spectrum can work together on limiting the federal government’s role in micromanaging certain aspects. Unfortunately, partisanship is keeping the politicians from working together on limiting the powers of the federal government. There is hardly anybody in Congress that favors limiting the its role in both domestic and foreign policy. As long as both parties hold some sort of antipathy towards each other, they will never find some common ground on possible limitations of the government.
Most of the distrust toward the federal government comes from the government overstepping its constitutional boundaries. There is no question that it provides some vital services like military defense and judicial courts, but more and more people are starting to realize that there are certain things that the federal government cannot be trusted with, such as nation-building and military intervention. The skepticism will force the government to realize that the people are watching them and know what move they make.
