In government we (sort of) trust

Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed Monday morning after a one-month delay prompted by the discovery that the FBI mishandled more than 4,400 documents related to his investigation and trial.

Outrage over the lost documents produced little if any sympathy for McVeigh--certainly not enough to spare his life--but the debate over the effectiveness of the FBI and the federal government in general goes on. A review of recent polling shows many Americans have some doubts about the federal government's effectiveness and think it has grown too large. But they also would like to see the federal government increase spending for specific programs.

The FBI In Trouble

Recent surveys suggest Americans still generally have confidence in the FBI, but also feel that the mistakes made in the McVeigh case are a sign of problems within the agency. Twenty-eight percent of respondents to a mid-May poll from ABC News and the Washington Post said they were "very" confident in the FBI's ability to do its job, while 54 percent said they were "somewhat" confident, 10 percent said they were "not too" confident, and 6 percent said they were "not at all" confident.

A mid-May CBS News poll, meanwhile, asked respondents whether they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the FBI. Twenty-four percent said their opinion was favorable, 25 percent said it was not favorable, 19 percent were undecided, and 30 percent said they did not know enough about the FBI to give an opinion.

When asked about the FBI's handling of the McVeigh case, however, respondents showed some skepticism. While 38 percent of respondents to the ABC News/Washington Post poll said they thought the FBI's mistakes were an isolated incident, 52 percent said they were a sign of deeper problems. And 43 percent of respondents to a May Newsweek poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates agreed that the FBI's failure to disclose evidence in the case was likely "an attempt to conceal something embarrassing to the government or law enforcement, even if it wasn't relevant to McVeigh's guilt or innocence." Forty percent said the blunders were "the result of an accident or bureaucratic error."

Rating Our Other Institutions

And how do people feel about agencies other than the FBI? A September 2000 Harris poll asked respondents to rate the job various agencies did. Seventy-eight percent gave the Centers for Disease Control an "excellent" or "pretty fair" rating. Sixty-four percent said the same for the National Institutes of Health, 61 percent for the Food and Drug Administration, 58 percent for the Federal Aviation Administration, 57 percent for the Environmental Protection Agency, 58 percent for the Securities and Exchange Commission, 48 percent for the Social Security Administration, and 46 percent for the Internal Revenue Service.

CBS News asked respondents in mid-January how often they thought they could trust the government in Washington to do what is right. Three percent said they could always trust the government, 28 percent said they could most of the time, 64 percent said they could sometimes, and 3 percent said they could never trust the federal government to do what's right.

A March Los Angeles Times poll found a different result: 29 percent said they could trust the government to do what is right always or most of the time, and 69 percent said they could trust the government only sometimes or hardly ever.

And a December 2000 Hart (D)/Teeter (R) poll conducted for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal suggested the public had less confidence in the federal government than in many other American institutions. Just 28 percent of respondents said they had either a "great deal" or "quite a bit" of confidence in the federal government.

Institutions that received higher ratings were the military (63 percent), small business (59 percent), high-tech industry (54 percent), the Supreme Court (52 percent), local government (38 percent), state government (38 percent), the financial industry (36 percent) and public schools (32 percent). Institutions that scored lower than the federal government were Congress (26 percent), large corporations (26 percent), the national news media (20 percent) and the entertainment industry (17 percent).

Wanted: A Smaller Government That Provides More

Polls also show mixed opinions over the size and scope of the federal government--respondents often say it is too big, but they also say they want it to provide more or better services. Fifty-two percent of respondents to a Gallup poll conducted for CNN and USA Today in late May agreed that the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens (46 percent disagreed).

The mid-January CBS News poll found 51 percent of respondents preferred a smaller government that provided fewer services over a bigger government that provided more services. But by a 62 percent to 31 percent margin, respondents to an April poll by ABC News and the Washington Post said providing needed services was more important to them than holding down the size of the government.

Respondents with different political party affiliations have predictably different views of government size, the CBS News poll shows. Republican respondents preferred a smaller government, by a 68 percent to 23 percent margin. Democrats favored a larger government, by a 51 percent to 35 percent margin. And 55 percent of independents said they preferred a smaller government, while 31 percent wanted a bigger government.

But when asked whether the federal government spent enough money on specific programs, respondents of all stripes called for bigger government. Sixty percent of respondents to a Greenberg Quinlan Research (D)/Tarrance Group (R) poll conducted for the National Education Association said the federal government does not spend enough money on education. The plurality--41 percent--of respondents to a February Gallup poll said the federal government does not spend enough on defense. And respondents to an April ABC News.com poll favored additional federal spending to provide health care for the uninsured over an income tax cut by a 52 percent to 42 percent margin.