130 PART TwO • THE POlITICS OF AMERICAn dEMOCRACy
Political Trust
The degree to which
individuals express trust
in the government and
political institutions,
usually measured through
a specific series of survey
questions.evaluate their government’s per formance. Political trust, the degree to which individuals
express trust in political institutions, has been measured by a variety of polling questions.
One of these is whether the respondent is satisfied with “the way things are going in
the United States.” As you can see in Figure 6–3 below, during the successful presidency
of Republican Ronald Reagan (1981–1989), satisfaction levels rose from a fairly dismal
20 percent range to around 50 percent. Republican George H. W. Bush (1989–1993)
enjoyed high levels of satisfaction until 1992, when rates fell back to the 20 percent range.
This fall reflected the economic problems and other difficulties that handed the presidency
to Democrat Bill Clinton (1993–2001).
Clinton’s two terms appear to have been mostly a success, as satisfaction levels rose
as high as 70 percent. Under Republican George W. Bush (2001–2009), however, satisfac-
tion levels slowly fell. In October 2008, at the peak of the crisis in the financial industry,
satisfaction bottomed out at an unprecedented 7 percent. Thereafter, the rate fluctuated
between 11 and 36 percent, reflecting continued economic difficulties and a variety of
political crises.The Most Important Problems
Although people may not always have much confidence in government, they nonethe-
less turn to it to solve what they perceive to be the major problems facing the country.
Table 6–2 on the following page, which is based on various polls conducted from 1990
to 2013, shows that the most important problems have changed over time. The public
tends to emphasize problems that are immediate. It is not at all unusual to see fairly sud-
den, and even apparently contradictory, shifts in public perceptions of what government
should do. In recent years, the economic crisis and unemployment have reached the top
of the problems list.Public Opinion and Policymaking
Policymakers cannot always be guided by opinion polls. In the end, politicians must make
their own choices, and those choices necessarily involve trade-offs. If politicians vote for
increased spending to improve education, for example, by necessity fewer resources are
available for other worthy projects. Individuals who are polled do not have to make such
trade-offs when they respond to questions. Indeed, survey respondents usually are notPercent Satisfied20304050607080Question: In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?
10
060(^7170)
43
24
14
66
29
69
50
24
12
1980 1983 1 986 1989 1992 1995 1 998 2001 2004 200 720102013
Percentage
7
36
36 33
11
FIguRE 6–3: Political Satisfaction Trend
Sources: Gallup polls, 1979 through 2013.
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