A political polling report published last week by the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute (AEI) captured the attitude of the American public towards government. In short: cynicism and uncertainty across the board is a widespread trend.
Among the report’s findings is the fact that a record number of respondents believe government cannot solve the problems it tackles. Not only that, but most Americans now believe the government runs its programs poorly, and the performance is getting worse instead of better. Moreover, about 45 percent think government is a threat to personal liberty.
Only three percent of those polled said the government did not need major reform.
The report also points out that the combination of the stimulus, bailouts, and the health care reform bills have had enormous effects on the public psyche. One of the polls analyzed in the report, in fact, revealed that 50 percent of Americans would be happier with a smaller government with fewer services. That number has also risen significantly since President Obama took office.
Despite the ardency in Americans’ negative view of big government, a longstanding and well-known political contradiction was also reflected in the report. Namely, that while Americans believe cutting spending is necessary to reduce government waste, they are opposed to cutting spending on popular programs — programs that also happen to be the most costly.
Spending reduction proposals that the polls found were particularly unpopular were halting the unemployment benefits beyond the usual 26 weeks, privatizing Social Security, and raising the age at which a person can receive Medicare or Social Security benefits.
In all three of those categories, most Americans firmly decided that those proposals should be “taken off the table”.
However, the report seems to suggest that the American public is overwhelmingly moving toward the center-right, that Americans have repudiated the Obama agenda, and that conservatives have a legitimate hope for victory in 2012.
But AEI scholar Karlyn Bowman says not so fast. The report, she told The Daily Caller, does not so much demonstrate an embrace of the conservative philosophy as it is a reflection of the times. “Clearly the public is in a very sour mood,” she said. “That’s partly why independents moved so massively to Republicans in November.”
According to Bowman, the reason so many people are cynical about government is because of the still-floundering economy. She pointed to the statistic that said that the amount of people that are angry at the government today has doubled since 2000. “When economy is doing well, people are willing to let the government do more,” Bowman told TheDC. The opposite effect takes place during an economic downturn.
“This is definitely a mark of the times,” she added.
For Bowman, the biggest takeaway is that Americans are having to become increasingly self-reliant in the absence of a well-functioning government.
“Maybe we are at a unique moment where there’s an opportunity to try to get things in the right direction in part because people are having to do it themselves,” she said. “That’s new…something really fundamental has changed.”
As far as what these new trends mean for the Republican politicians, Bowman acknowledged there will still be challenges ahead, but noted that “they have heard the public…it’s not clear the president has.”