Speaking to the American people on Wednesday, President Obama needed not only to articulate his administration’s counter-terrorism policy, he had to persuade a country disillusioned with government. According to the results of Gallup’s “Governance” poll, Americans’ trust in government and its ability to solve problems both foreign and domestic is at a record low.
The polling data revealed that a mere 43 percent of Americans have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the Federal government’s ability to handle international problems. Only 40 percent expressed the same confidence in the government’s ability to deal with domestic issues.
“Gallup has never measured lower levels of trust in the federal government to handle pressing issues than now,” said the polling group. “That includes the Watergate era in 1974, when 51% of Americans trusted the government’s ability to handle domestic problems and 73% trusted its ability to deal with international problems, and also at the tail end of the Bush administration when his job approval ratings were consistently below 40% and frequently below 30%.”
Last year, a majority of Americans lacked confidence in their government’s foreign policy for the first time in the forty-year history of the poll. Since then, confidence in the federal government’s ability to handle foreign policy has slipped an additional six points.
While members of all parties show decreased confidence in the current state of politics, the poll demonstrated that Democrats continued to have faith in hope and change to a degree not shared by either Republicans or independents. Gallup found that some 70 percent of Democrats trust the government’s ability to handle international problems, compared to 39 percent of independents and 27 percent of Republicans.
Overall trust in government now stands at nearly half of what it was in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, when Gallup reported approval ratings of 83 percent for international affairs and 77 percent for domestic ones.
What will shift this fundamental dissatisfaction with government? Gallup can’t say for certain, but posits that “simply voting new people into office may not be sufficient to restore trust in government” and suggest that “given the public’s frustration with the way the government is working, it may be necessary to elect federal officials who are more willing to work together with the other party to find solutions to the nation’s top problems.”
