The Capitol Rioters Are Giving Insurrection a Bad Name

In 1958 the American National Election Study began asking Americans whether they trusted the federal government to do the right thing all or most of the time. By this measure, American trust in government peaked at 77 percent in 1964, shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the election of Lyndon B. Johnson. By the end of Jimmy Carter’s presidency in 1980, trust had fallen below 30 percent, and while the exact percentage has fluctuated since then, it has never returned to the lofty heights of the early 1960s. Fewer than 20 percent of Americans now express strong trust in the government to do the right thing all or most of the time—an inversion of 30 years ago, when only a small minority consistently mistrusted the government.

Some might blame a decline in trust in the federal government on the uniquely dysfunctional presidency of Richard Nixon—indeed, trust in government fell 20 percentage points during his time in office. But Americans didn’t lose trust only in the federal government. We lost trust in institutions of all sorts. From the