A Brief History of Government-Bashing

Over at Slate's "Big Sort" blog, Bill Bishop provides a brief history of the collapse of faith in government in America. It's not a pretty picture, but at least we're not alone. Bishop notes that growing lack of trust in government is an international phenomenon:

Journalists have blamed this "crisis in confidence" on a "crisis in competence." Who could expect a public to trust a government that had brought us Vietnam, Watergate, WMDs, and, now, a multibillion-dollar financial implosion? Government got what it deserved.

The trouble with that argument is that it ignores the scope of the problem. At the same time Americans lost confidence in their government, so did the English. And the Aussies, French, Italians, Japanese, and Germans. The decline in confidence wasn't something special to the United States, a homegrown product of our politicians' failures. It was common to all industrialized countries. The lack of trust is a function of modern prosperity.