Declining Trust In Our Government :: essays research papers

Declining Trust in Our GovernmentIs the American peoples invest in our government declining? According to roughly people, it definitely is. Recent polls make this argument very valid. In1995, the Princeton Survey Research Associates conducted a telephone interviewof 1514 random sample adults. In this interview, people were asked how much ofthe time they trusted in the federal government to do the remediate thing. Twenty-one percent said most of the time and 71 percent said only some of thetime. When asked the same question of their state governments, the resultswere only slightly better. Thirty percent said most of the time and 62percent said only some of the time ("Why Dont"). This indicates that amajority of the American people believe that the American government is notdoing the right thing in a lot of the actions it takes. Of course, nobodyexpects the government to operate perfectly with no mistakes, because this isnot a perfect world. These numbers are excessively high though. What caused thisproblem in the United States, what is the extend of this problem in our country,and is this distrust of our government even a serious problem at completely? These arethree questions that need to be addressed in out society today.What really has caused the American people to distrust our government andwhen did this trend actually begin? I do not believe there is any clear answerto these questions and I do not believe it would ever be possible to pinpointany exact reason for the feelings of the American people. One reason cited bysome is that it is the fault of poor leaders. Two commonly damn leaders arePresident Johnson and President Nixon. Two of the biggest drops in the publicsconfidence in our government occurred in 1964, during the bombing of Vietnam,and in 1972, during Watergate (Nye). Although these two events may shake offcontributed to the distrust of the American government, I do not believe thattwo events and two leaders can be held totally responsible. For one thing,these things occurred over twenty years ago, why is there still distrust today.Not only does this distrust still exist, but many would say that it hasincreased greatly since then. I do not thing that two leaders can be pinpointedand blamed for destroying the trust in our government. Perhaps though the blamecould be pose on American political leaders in general. In a 1995 poll, thirty-five percent said the main reason that they do not trust the federal government