The Loss of Trust - Van Horne

The Loss of Trust - Van Horne

When the National Election Study (NES) conducted its first government trust survey in 1958, Americans were a contented lot. Trust in government “to do the right thing,” either “all of the time or most of the time” was high. Three out of four Americans trusted Eisenhower’s governance (73%). In Eisenhower, Americans saw a five-star Army general who masterminded the defeat of axis forces. The U.S. enjoyed global economic hegemony and Eisenhower’s advocacy of an FDR-styled public transportation program further fueled economic growth.

This rosy picture was short-lived. In fact, it was just the beginning of a sixty-year downward trend.  By the end of the Johnson and Nixon administrations in 1974, government trust was on life support (36%). Johnson’s mendacious Tonkin Gulf resolution buttressed a calamitous war costing 58,000 lives and 158,000 wounded. Nixon’s treasonous effort to sabotage the opposition party accelerated the relentless loss of citizen trust. While Clinton temporarily reversed the corrosive loss of trust (from 22% to 46% in 1993), presidential leadership during the Bush Jr. presidency (featuring public deception about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq), drove public trust down further (from 44% to 25%).

By the time the Trump era ended, that trust statistic hit 24 percent. Since effective government depends on the perceived legitimacy and ethical integrity of presidential leadership, this trend is disastrous. Such legitimacy is critical when complex policy issues like climate change, nuclear threats, the proliferation of guns, or the effort to control global pandemics are involved. These policy issues depend heavily on scientific advice, peer-reviewed evidence, and respect for scientific experts.

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But one party, and one leader have gone the extra mile to discredit evidence-based policymaking. As Tom Nichols of the Naval War College pointed out in The Death of Expertise, the rejection of scientific knowledge and expertise has become a demonstration of political loyalty, a badge of honor in today’s G.O.P. The consequences of evidence-denial have been damning but ignored by most Republican leaders. As Nichols noted, “Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and been so resistant to learning anything.”    

Consider a recent Johns Hopkins analysis of COVID-19 mortality rate data as the premier triumph of tribal ignorance over expertise. In that analysis, 3,000 U.S. counties nationwide were arrayed in ten equal groups (about 31 million in each decile) from lowest to highest based upon their percentage of Trump voters. As the percent of Trump voters increased, COVID deaths per 100,000 adults increased dramatically. In the “bluest” group (0 % to 26% Trump support), the COVID death rate was 18 per 100,000.  In the “reddest” group (above 70.6 % Trump support), the death rate was 99.7 per 100,000 - 5.5 times higher than in the lowest Trump vote group. Clearly, the public-health behavior modeled by your party’s top leader matters.

A charismatic leader who ridicules top health experts, and poo-poos a global pandemic for political advantage (while privately using the very treatments he publicly scorns) is both a public health risk, and a national security risk. President Trump ignored pandemic warnings by the Gates Foundation. He eliminated the Pandemic Unit which had once enjoyed a critical voice on the National Security Council. He threatened to cut funding to the World Health Organization, the premier global pandemic monitor, blaming it for our growing COVID problem. He modeled non-masking behavior when infected that endangered his staff and other leaders. He offered clinically disreputable advice to a highly suggestible public (injection of bleach, UV rays, use of hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, etc.). The Lancet Commission on Public Policy, by comparing U.S. COVID deaths with the lower COVID death rates of every other G-7 country (i.e. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the UK) indicted the U.S., estimating that 40 percent of 450,000 reported U.S. deaths (as of February 4th) were “avoidable” with more organized leadership.      

Now, some will argue that the county-level trends mentioned earlier reflect poorer education, or rural character of Trump voters. Other surveys contest that view - showcasing marked differences between Republicans and Democrats in their trust of science. According to PEW, even among Republicans with “high levels” of science knowledge, only 6 of 10 (59%) believe science generally produces accurate conclusions. Among Democrats, the comparison statistic is 86%. “Red state” scholar, Theda Skocpol, finds that religious conservatives “resent the use of experts as political authorities,” concluding instead that “Chances are, they’re aware that the virus is dangerous.” Still, many conservative Americans embraced “COVID denialism,” succumbing to tribal loyalty to a champion of anti-science skepticism and misinformation.  As we top the charts at 800,000 COVID deaths, the cost of tribalism becomes even more apparent. And, as the historian George Santayana once wrote, “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.”

 

Willard Van Horne Ph.D. is a retired sociologist, and former Director of Research for the New York State Education Department who is now living in Swansea, Mass.