The trust gap

Back in April, the Pew Research Center published a poll showing that the American people's trust in government had hit a 50 year low. Only 22 percent said that they could trust Washington all or most of the time. In the six months that have passed, the relationship has deteriorated still further. An Allstate-National Journal Heartland poll indicates that 58 percent of respondents are less confident in our federal elected officials than they were a year ago.

Government is about trust. This is especially true in a representative democracy, the form of government in which some people govern others only because the people have entrusted authority to them. In our democracy today, public trust is at an historic low. That means an astonishingly high percentage of the population sees an unacceptably wide gap between what the government is doing and what they would like the government to be doing in matters that are decisively important to them.

Given the trust gap, and given especially how widely and clearly the gap has been publicized, people are alarmed that the governing Democrats are proceeding with the transformative change that has brought them into such wide disfavor. Voters have been expressing their alarm in statewide elections (Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia), in the primaries leading up to the November elections, in polling responses, and at heavily attended demonstrations. Yet the administration and their legislative allies have shown little interest in moderating their pace and policies.

In fact, we see just the opposite. The more opposition that develops from below, the more determined the efforts become from above. There has even been serious talk of using a lame duck session of Congress (the time between the November election and the swearing in of the new Congress the following January) to pass all the hopelessly unpopular legislation that vulnerable legislators have been afraid to touch (e.g., card check, cap and trade), relying on the support of nothing-to-lose defeated office holders. Call it the Lame Duck Revolution. Remember House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's plan simply to "deem" the unpopular health insurance reform legislation through the House as a way of overcoming the awkward fact that she couldn't get a majority to pass it? As a consequence of maneuvers and attitudes like this, voters feel increasingly alienated from their government and have become implacably angry.

Legally, President Obama has a mandate to govern. With a four-year term in the White House and a majority in both houses of Congress, constitutionally he can do what he wants. But politically, he is like Wile E. Coyote who has pursued his catch beyond the edge of the cliff and is now running on air and about to fall. Usually, the sight of the cliff is enough to drive even the boldest statesman back closer to the popular will. Yes, he has every legal right to enact whatever legislative agenda he can get through Congress. But there is a diminished moral legitimacy to the acts of government when the great body of the people is strongly against them. Despite our government leaders' conformity to the due process of law, as the trust gap grows they take on an increasingly tyrannical quality. So, are the Democrats being faithful to the public by following through on their popular mandate for "change," or are they betraying the public by remaining largely unresponsive to the high levels of distrust the people are expressing? As the president said at the healthcare summit back in February, "That's what elections are for."