Thinking Differently About Trust in Government

Hardly a week goes by without hearing about Americans’ lack of trust in Washington. While some assert that the public’s distrust of government is a recent development coinciding with Donald Trump’s first term, the trust deficit is decades old. Fixing this problem will be nearly impossible given the structure of government, the direction of our politics, and the limitations of traditional public opinion surveys.

There have been only three periods since the 1970s when the familiar question about trusting the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time” ticked up, and in each case, it didn’t last long. In the mid-1980s after a deep recession, it was “Morning in America,” and Americans felt better about themselves and their government. The Iran-Contra scandal put the brakes on that. Trust in Washington again rose briefly toward the end of the Clinton presidency when the economy was humming. And after 9/11, responses to the familiar question inched up further.

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But these interludes did not reverse a decades-long low-trust environment for several reasons.

First, the larger historical context about why the public distrusts the government so much was nicely outlined by my AEI colleague Charles Murray more than a quarter century ago in a December 1997 Wall Street Journal op-ed. Murray wrote that prior to the Great Society there was an “unstated compact” between Americans and their government. Washington didn’t do much, and in return, people didn’t criticize Washington much. Once the government’s activities started expanding in the 1960s with Great Society programs, Americans found more to criticize. In a 1959 Gallup question that asked about the biggest threat to the country’s future, 14 percent said big government, 41 percent big labor, and 15 percent big business. When Gallup repeated the question in 1965, big government took the lead, as it has in every poll since.

Today, Washington’s reach, fueled by the public’s own desires for the federal government to play a major role in many areas, is vast. The title of a 2022 Pew Research Center report said it all, “Americans’ Views of Government: Decades of Distrust, Enduring Support for Its Role.” There is no avoiding it—bigness is a problem. There is a lot more of the government around to criticize.

Murray also pointed out that the rise of big government changed the relationship ordinary Americans had with Washington. The federal government’s involvement in many moral issues has, predictably, alienated some people, perhaps permanently. Think about the abortion, gay marriage, or transgender debates. Additionally, given Washington’s reach, individuals or businesses can easily run afoul of government regulations and mandates in daily life, eroding trust. Subsequently, since 1987, when the question was first asked by Pew, majorities have said the federal government controls too much of our lives.

Second, I would add to this argument that expanding the size and scope of the federal government creates more opportunities for malfeasance and scandal when government activity is far-flung and oversight difficult. For more than 50 years polling has shown that large numbers of Americans believe the federal government is wasteful, inefficient, and full of bad actors. For example, the staggering sums lost to pandemic-era fraud deeply reinforced public skepticism of Washington. Government is also maddeningly slow (only 44 EV charging stations were set up during the Biden years under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program and no broadband service was established in rural areas after passage of the infrastructure bill). Federal procurement is a mess. And the media’s relentless negativity (though in many cases legitimate criticism of government performance) and partisan polarization reinforce this growing distrust on a daily basis.

A third reason we won’t reverse the trust deficit any time soon, one that our founders understood, is that the public sees some utility in its distrust. Although 64 percent of Americans in a 2018 Pew poll said low trust makes it harder for government to solve problems, the public knows politicians pay attention to polls showing a trust deficit, and thus their negative attitudes may encourage better performance or at least greater attention to the matter. Americans’ weak pro-state tradition also means Americans are disposed toward skepticism of government.

What Now?

While polls gauging trust in Washington may move up a few points, absent a crisis or an economic renaissance, the levels of public trust prevailing decades ago are unlikely to be restored any time soon. Distrust of government is our default response. Both parties muddle through with fumbling responses to crises—like the 9/11 attacks (2001), Hurricane Katrina (2005), the Great Recession (2008), and Covid (2020)—and wonder why Americans don’t like the federal government.

On the more technical side, pollsters’ repetitive questions about trust in government aren’t yielding any new insights about the dimensions of distrust or how to fix it. But, there are better ways to understand and measure the depth of public concerns that may be emerging.

As alluded to upfront, the most familiar trust question was asked first in 1958, when the University of Michigan asked people how much of the time they thought they could trust the government in Washington to do the right thing. Sixteen percent answered “just about always,” 57 percent “most of the time,” and 23 percent “some of the time.” There is no record of any mention of “none of the time” or “never.” How times have changed. In a recent national poll, one percent trusted the federal government just about always, 16 percent most of the time, and 64 percent some of the time. Eighteen percent chose the “never” response.

We need to look at additional measures, and a few pollsters have pointed the way towards new models. In 2003, Gallup began to ask the public to rate the job being done by seven different departments; in 2024, they asked about 16. In its 2015 study “Beyond Distrust: How Americans View Their Government,” Pew built on questions asked by Roper in the 1980s and targeted them on 17 specific agencies. Similarly, the Kaiser Family Foundation is asking whether several health agencies provide reliable information to Americans.

Regularly updating these questions and comparing the results of their different wordings is important. Many pollsters inquire about individual agencies occasionally, but usually only when the agency faces a scandal or serious difficulties. For example, the 2013 allegation that the IRS was scrutinizing conservative groups’ activities at a higher rate than those of liberal groups produced nearly 80 polling questions in the Roper Center’s poll archive compared to six general questions in 2012.

Pollsters soon charge ahead to the next headline problem, and we have little information about whether an agency has recovered its standing. During Covid, the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Tracker assessed the CDC regularly. The CDC got high marks initially, but as time passed, trust declined. The CDC has embarked on a reset, and time will tell if it can recover its high levels of trust. So, too, the Secret Service, whose Gallup rating dropped 23 points after the July 2024 Trump assassination attempt. It is now in recovery mode. Performance matters, and these polls measure it.

It is only by looking at trends over time in perceptions of performance of specific functions that we can fully understand the levels of trust Americans have in government. The work Gallup and Pew have done should expand. Pollsters should track well-known entities. Opinion on little-known ones only measures vague name identification. The pollsters’ questions need to be asked at least yearly, and, ideally, the questions should include a response, “I haven’t followed it closely enough to say,” which will give us an indication of attention paid to government work. The government itself should not be involved. Philanthropies could support the work.

No polling measure is perfect, but assessing individual agencies regularly in addition to the familiar question about the public’s trust in government to do the right thing will provide a much clearer picture of how Americans view their government. It is time to put more effort into measures that will yield better impressions, and time for politicians to put more effort into delivering competent governance and restoring public trust in government policies.

Karlyn Bowman is a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute.