Among President Obama’s first statements concerning the National Security Agency’s mining of metadata from billions of private telephone calls, emails and website visits was this curious observation: “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.”

That is an especially curious statement because it was uttered by a chief executive who surely knew that public trust in every part of government in Washington (except the U.S. military) is already at historic lows. Washington’s credibility gap with the American people wasn’t produced by the NSA revelations — it predates Obama’s first inauguration — but the problem has grown measurably deeper on his watch, especially during and since his re-election campaign last year.