The post-Sept. 11 romance between the public and the federal government is fading fast, according to a survey released yesterday by the Brookings Institution's Center for Public Service.
While polls conducted in the weeks after Sept. 11 found that long-languishing trust in government had increased dramatically, a survey conducted this month suggests that confidence in government is headed back down.
Forty percent of Americans say they trust the federal government to do what's right at least most of the time. That's down 17 percentage points from a survey conducted for the center in October, but it is higher than the 29 percent recorded in July.
Government favorableness ratings followed the same pattern. The percentage of people viewing the government favorably rose from 50 percent last summer to 78 percent in the fall, only to drop 18 percentage points since then.
"The simple answer to why trust in government rose is the rally-round-the-flag effect: We love government more when government is threatened," said G. Calvin Mackenzie, a professor at Colby College and co-author of the center's report. "But that's like desert rain, it evaporates very quickly."
Others at the news conference releasing the survey pointed to recent, highly publicized missteps by federal agencies such as the INS and FBI as factors causing the decline in trust.
"The heightened focus on government after September 11th initially created a heightened respect, because government did good things and showed leadership. But in succeeding months, significant issues surfaced and people rightly concluded the government has serious problems," said Constance Horner, a former head of the Office of Personnel Management who is serving on the center's new National Commission on the Public Service.
Social scientists have been consistently measuring the public's faith in Washington for nearly half a century. Trust reached its peak of 76 percent in the early 1960s, before the Vietnam War, Watergate and a series of corrosive scandals sent ratings plummeting to low levels from which they have not recovered.
Experts disagree on whether this is a problem. Some say that a healthy skepticism about excessive government runs throughout American history. Others say these attitudes may hinder any administration's ability to react to events.
"When government is trusted, it has broad latitude to take bold actions. When trust is low . . . everything is a harder sell for leaders," Mackenzie said.
An additional problem is that dim views of the federal government get in the way of attracting talented workers. "We're in a vise where in recent years trust has gone down and we've gone from a healthy skepticism to a pervasive cynicism, which affects the kind of people you can get in government," said commission head Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
"There were some people who thought the surge in trust in government would mean an end to recruiting difficulties, that there would be people lining up," said Brookings Vice President Paul Light. "I think there has been some improvement in agencies that can directly articulate a link to the war on terrorism, such as the CIA, FBI and Defense, but I'm not hearing much about a surge in other agencies."
Unlike trust in government, public ratings of the president and key Cabinet officials have not eroded as substantially since their spike after Sept. 11. This may even be a reason why trust has not receded to last summer's levels.
"The high levels of trust in President Bush, Vice President Cheney and the Cabinet members might be holding up trust in government," Mackenzie said.
Other measures relating to the government never experienced an increase, however, including negative perceptions of government efficiency and cynical views of federal employees, according to Light.
Yet while some Americans may say they don't trust the government, their actions show implicit faith, Mackenzie said.
"When we go get meat at the stores, and the government labels say it is safe, we believe we won't get trichinosis from it. . . . When we send a big check through the mail we assume it will get there," Mackenzie said. "We do, in our actions, express trust in government."
