Although he is historically associated with an unpopular war and urban unrest, the last president to govern during an era of unprecedented trust in government was Lyndon Johnson, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
Johnson, who was president from November of 1963 upon the assassination of John F. Kennedy until the end of his term of office in January 1969, remains today a controversial figure, primarily because he enlarged the U.S military presence in Vietnam to the tune of more than half a million soldiers.
But in the early months of his presidency, notes the Pew study, Johnson basked in a public trust level that reached 77%, the highest ever recorded by the organization. By the end of his presidency, the percentage of people indicating that they trusted the federal government to do the right thing had dropped to 62% and has been precipitously heading downward ever since.
The most recent Pew survey on the topic shows how far south the numbers have gone: the overall average of people expressing trust in Washington is now down to 16%, a number only lower at 10% in 2011 when the country was in the midst of the Great Recession.
Currently, notes a Pew narrative accompanying the latest numbers, “25% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they trust the federal government just about always or most of the time, compared with 8% of Republicans and Republican-leaners.”
At the same time, “Democrats report slightly less trust in the federal government today than a year ago,” while “Republicans’ views have been relatively unchanged over this period.”
Looked at from any perspective, the responses by party identification are depressed compared to early 1964 when 80% of Democrats and 73% of Republicans expressed a positive view of Washington.
The Pew survey also indicates a racial unity of sorts on government trust questions: while 74% of whites during the final years of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency in 1958 and 62% of blacks said they trusted the government to “do what is right always or most of the time,” today only 13% of Whites expressed any level of confidence, along with 21% of Blacks.
Hispanic Americans were not polled on the question until 1990, when 39% indicated trust in government. That figure among this demographic is now down to 29%. Asian Americans, not polled until the summer of 2020, have expressed a similar decline in trust dropping from 27% to 23%.
While the levels of trust have been almost consistently on a slippery slope since the 1960s, notes Pew, there have been several upward bumps: during the last year of the Reagan presidency the figure was up to 44%, up from 32% when Reagan took office, and during the months after the September 11 attacks, when the figure reached 54%.
At no time since 2001 has the level been above the 50% mark.
The most recent 16% positive poll, notes Pew, “is among the lowest trust measured in nearly seven decades of polling,” even lower than the 20% in 2022 who said they “trusted the government just about always or most of the time.”
By Garry Boulard
