Contradictions

I was having dinner with a friend last night who works in the good-government sector, and I said I think that public perception of federal employees operates like a reverse Picture of Dorian Gray. What people see in the portrait--dedicated civil servants, slackers who waste money, bureaucrats who impinge on our freedom, over-worked people trying to do the right thing in a system that won't help them--has more to do with their perspective and what they want to see, than the actual reality of federal workers' lives.

Some of that contradictory impulse seems apparent in a new poll (full results are a link in the story, and require registration) commissioned by POLITICO. The 1,000 registered voters surveyed said they don't trust government very much:

Only 5 percent said they have a “great deal” of trust that the federal government will manage its finances responsibly, while 23 percent expressed “some” trust that the government will be financially responsible. Meanwhile, an overwhelming 63 percent of respondents described their amount of trust as “not very much” or “none at all.”

62 percent of respondents said their trust in government has fallen over the last 12 months (though 38 percent say they expect their trust in government to increase over the next year, perhaps reflecting optimism about President-elect Obama). And yet, despite these grave concerns, the respondents want government to do more to fix the economy. It's always hard to track where exactly distrust originates. But I'd be curious to see how many of those people who don't trust government think government is fundamentally unsound, and how many think appropriate actions haven't begun because of leadership decisions. Distrusting the current administration, and distrusting government as a whole are different things, and it would be useful to see what the results are on the latter, and where that reaction comes from.