Four Decades of Declining Trust in D.C.

The decline in political trust began with Watergate. But what’s striking today is how differently whites and non-whites views government.











Gridlock in Washington simply mirrors who we are and where America is.

And why is that?  Pinkerton explains: “The ideology of multiculturalism and the demography of immigration have eroded the sort of social solidarity that’s needed to support a leftward shift.”

So today, gridlock in Washington simply mirrors who we are and where America is. The numbers say that congressional Democrats are disfavored by a plurality of Americans, that the congressional GOP is disliked by a majority of the country, and that Obama‘s popularity is at a nadir. 

Polls also tell us that our citizens do not see the world through similar eyes. When asked about what matters most to them, conservatives’ top policy and word-choices included following the Constitution, stopping abortion, impeaching the president, and halting illegal immigration. Liberals focused on stopping Republicans, Congress doing its job, and amnesty for immigrants. Despite Obama acknowledging that diversity brings its own tensions, the President and his party continue to plug away for open borders, acting as though diversity for its own sake is an unalloyed good, and then recoiling in horror at the face of pushback.

Ironically, the Nixon era marked a political arcadia, of sorts. Nixon won reelection with a popular landslide, a feat since pulled off by only Ronald Reagan in 1984. Likewise, Nixon’s impeachment shared the virtue of similarly transcending party and region. Indeed, it was a living history and civics lesson.

Back then, Southern Democrats like Walter Flowers of Alabama and James Mann of South Carolina managed to find common ground with the likes of Hamilton Fish, a New York Republican, whose namesake served as Ulysses S. Grant’s Secretary of State. Virginia Republican Caldwell Butler, who just died last month and whose ancestors included a Confederate General who received a death bed promotion from Stonewall Jackson, made common cause with Texas Democrat Barbara Jordan, who descended from sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and former slaves.

In supporting impeachment, Jordan announced, “My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total.” Words like that are still easy to find, but that kind of faith is much harder to believe or to have in 2014. With each election feeling like a Civil War reenactment, Jordan’s sentiments are really words from a bygone era.