PEW polls Americans. It has a graph for 1958-2017. Trust is now just slightly above its historic low. Only 18 percent say that they trust the government in Washington to do the right thing always (3%) or most of the time (15%).
We are talking about a poll that vaguely measures millions of opinions over 60 years. There’s a huge number of reasons why people register a lack of trust in the U.S. government. I will suggest one big reason: war. Polls taken right after a president gets us into a war always show high approval; but that support evaporates as time passes. In the PEW graph, trust declines from 1964 to 1980, a period covering the unpopular Vietnam War. Trust falls during the Bush I first war in Iraq. Trust falls sharply during the wars started by Bush II. Trust rises during the relatively peaceful years of Reagan and Clinton, their military forays being relatively brief and limited.
I think that big events that indicate disorder cause Americans to lose trust, because they expect the government to provide order. Disorder indicates a government failing at its basic mission. Wars show disorder. Other major events revealing disorder are the assassination of John F. Kennedy followed by other notable assassinations, the inflation accompanying the Vietnam War, the energy crisis of the 70s associated with the inflation, and the attacks on and destruction of the Trade Towers in New York City.
All these events permeated the entire society. They were broad and far-reaching in their effects on Americans.
We are now experiencing a fairly high level of domestic disorder that’s rooted in political rivalries, specifically, opposition to Trump. Under ordinary moderate kinds of opposition to the sitting president and his policies, we might expect trust to rise if the policies renewed order and didn’t bring new disorder. This is not the case now. The opposition of Democrats is not moderate but bitter, resentful and unforgiving; and it includes many Republicans.
12:29 pm on October 25, 2018