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The Right Bite
There are five maxims the federal government can follow to regain the public confidence it has lost over the past four decades.
One of the puzzles of our age is why Americans distrust their own government so deeply. Against the inescapable and well-publicized cases of failure by the federal government must be weighed a remarkable half-century record of accomplishment. The federal government has cleaned up our air and water, improved safety in the workplace, spurred immense amounts of scientific and medical research, and underwritten technological innovations, such as the computer and the Internet, that have transformed our society. It has dramatically reduced poverty among the elderly while ensuring their access to medical care. It has expanded both individual freedom and socialinclusion—for women, racial and ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities, among others. The list goes on. Yet despite this record, trust in the federal government now stands at the lowest level ever recorded. That is not merely a riddle for academicians. Without the public’s confidence it becomes ever more difficult for government to do its jobeffectively.
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William A. Galston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he holds the Ezra Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies. A former deputy assistant for domestic policy to President Bill Clinton, he is the author most recently of Public Matters: Politics, Policy, and Religion in the 21st Century (2005).
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The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and in no way represent the views or opinions of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. This section is moderated by Wilson Quarterly staff.
Special Interests
The author fails to take into account the growing view over the last few decades that Washington was controlled by special interests, blocking out the voice of the people as a major reason for growing cynicism about the federal government Such a view obviously has problems since it presumes that the people, however defined, have a unified voice. Still it is a powerful one and arguably gave Obama's rhetoric about lobbyists and the ability of people to bring about change such resonance. This is not to suggest that the reasons made out by Mr. Galston are wrong. In fact, I think they are strengthened by this argument since it is the growth in the power of the federal government that he delineates in his article that have prompted the attempts by certain groups to guide policy in certain ways.
Posted by: sg | 7/15/09