JONATHAN CHAIT APRIL 22, 2010
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Wall Street Journal op-ed columnist Daniel Henninger writes today that the democratic agenda has caused public trust in government to collapse: "After one year of the charismatic, ever-present Barack Obama," he writes, "after passage of the party's totemic health-care bill, after spending zillions on Keynesian pump-priming, the American people—well beyond the tea partiers—have the lowest opinion ever of national government."
Henninger helpfully accompanies his column with a graph charting public trust in government:
Wow -- public trust in government really has fallen since Obama took office in, um... 2004? Wait, it's possible something other than Obama's big-government binge is driving this trend. Maybe this is a function of economic conditions? Henninger says no:
I don't buy this. Something unique happened in the first Obama year, about the last thing the Democratic Party needed: The veil was ripped from the true cost of government. This is the ghastly nightmare Democrats have always needed to keep locked in a crypt.
Before the Internet, that was easy. Washington, California, New York, New Jersey—who knew what the pols were spending? The Democrats (and their Republican pilot fish) could get away with this. Not now. Email lists, 24/7 newspapers, blogs, TV and talk radio—the spending beast is running naked.
Huh. So, Henninger rejects the theory, which he ascribes to "Democrats," that economic conditions are driving public mistrust of government. He thinks it's that blogs, email lists, talk radio and TV now allow people to know how much the government is spending. There was no way to find this information out before.
Well, it's a theory. I'd argue that the correlation between economic conditions and public distrust of government is more of a demonstrable fact than some Democratic excuse:
Henninger's theory suggests that public mistrust in government won't come back down if unemployment returns to normal levels. Anybody want to bet on him revisiting this theory if he's proven wrong?
3 comments
You must mean "Democratic agenda", Jonathan, not "democratic." I am surprised that you didn't flag Daniel Henniger for the Wehner fallacy, for that is what he perpetrates in his op-ed piece. And the vast majority of Americans couldn't tell you what total government spending is at any level, which is what marks his contention as ripe insanity. The epistemic closure conservatives are striving mightily to zero out any economic contribution to Barack Obama's falling popularity. The approval ratings of the leader of any democratic nation tracks quite closely to how the economy of a given nation is performing. Leaders the world over, left, right , and center, have not proven to be very popular during the recession. What a tremendous surprise.
- liberal reformer
April 22, 2010 at 11:33am
Ohmygosh. A good Chait article, which for once does more than simply parrot DNC propaganda. Wil miracles never cease.
- TNR.Reader
April 22, 2010 at 12:34pm
If this were a stock, it could be either a reasonable buy, at its lows, or a short, headed toward zero. Obama appears to be more of a gambler than Bush, loading up on long out of the money calls. The problem with your analysis Jonathan is that the overall trend is ominous, and happens to begin with the second great expansion of government this century. (Roosevelt's was peanuts, a downpayment on what was to come.) And while trust improved markedly during Clinton's term, it didn't start moving up until the Contract with America took congress. Interesting. That being said, the Bush/Delay regime absolutely destroyed trust. The Dems and Obama have not yet changed the downward path, though there has been a blip, as yet insignificant. Great and timely comment though, one you should keep an eye on this one.
- ds111
April 22, 2010 at 4:08pm