A Congressional Briefing
Executive Summary
COSSA held its final congressional briefing of the year on July 16. The briefing, Do Americans Care About and Trust Their Government?, was moderated by Representative David Price (D-NC) and featured three social scientists who discussed Americans' attitudes about politics and government institutions. Overall, the presenters offered disturbingly pessimistic views regarding Americans' feelings about and participation in the nation's political system.
John Hibbing, professor of political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and co-author of the 1995 book Congress as Public Enemy: Public Attitudes Toward Political Institutions, discussed the public's perceptions about and confidence in public institutions, particularly Congress. Hibbing referred to data which depict confidence in political institutions from 1966 through 1999, revealing that the public has lost confidence in the three institutions of federal government — the Congress, the President, the Supreme Court — over the past 30 years. He noted that of the three, Congress consistently received the least confidence, while the Supreme Court earned the most confidence. He therefore asked, what leads to the difference in confidence levels between these two institutions. Based on information from survey groups, Hibbing noted that the public does not approve of congressional processes.
The public, he said, is generally not concerned about policy, but is upset with the process. The public sees conflict as unnecessary, and compromise as selling out, said Hibbing. Additionally, the public sees Congress dominated by institutions, by a professional political class, by self-interested Members, and special interests (which people consider the "heart of all political evil"). This belief, however, does not necessarily mean there should be comprehensive political reform to move the people closer to governing (a move toward direct democracy). People, he said, do not want that because they generally are not comfortable with any type of conflict.
The public, he said, believes there is a societal consensus available for policy problems and that Congress cannot reach consensus because of a managerial problem. Thus, Hibbing said that the real problem is people's misconception about how governing works. This problem and the public misconception about governing, he said, may be a result of how government is taught in the schools. Students, he said, get a very antiseptic notion of government. He joked that students should be taught "barbarics" along with civics.
Hibbing concluded by noting that the public is indeed disengaged with politics and the political system, but, based on his focus groups, he is not sure that people want to be involved. What the public really wants, according to Hibbing, is for politicians to be in touch with the voters and to understand their concerns.
Pippa Norris, from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, spoke about the media's role in crafting the public's attitudes toward government institutions. She suggested that public distrust of government institutions is a result of structural problems illuminated by the media, and not the media itself.
Today, she said, there are many books and articles being written blaming the media for the public's negative attitudes about political institutions. She pointed out that the public concern with the mass media is nothing new. This concern, she said, is cyclical. She noted that the 1960s and 1970s — periods of great consternation with government institutions, marked by civic disengagement and lack of public participation — were marked by complaints about media coverage.
There are many more outlets and sources of information today than existed in the 1960s and 1970s. She noted that there is evidence to suggest that content coverage "has become more negative and a more adversarial culture has developed between the media and government officials."
She further addressed the issue of the media's affect on public attitudes toward government institutions. Norris gave little credence to the notion of "video-malaise," a term to describe the "link between reliance upon American television journalism and feelings of political cynicism, social mistrust, and lack of political efficacy." Looking at National Election Surveys (NES), Norris noted that the data suggest that the mass media has not increased public apathy or increased negative public attitudes about government institutions. Additionally, she dismissed the idea that the media "demobilizes the electorate."
Wendy Rahn, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, based her discussion on a generational framework. She surmised that there are generational factors which have led the younger Americans, principally the so-called "Generation X," to become increasingly disengaged and disenchanted with the nation's political system. In other words, she noted that the younger generations are expressing unhappiness and dissatisfaction with the political system because of actual events, and "not just because they are young." She said that this is a real problem.
Rahn disagreed with Norris about the role of the news media in shaping the public's general dissatisfaction with political institutions. Rahn suggested that the increasingly negative campaigns of recent years are partly to blame for the younger generation's unhappiness. She said, "I do think that changes in campaign discourse and the tone of media coverage of politics are in part responsible for the kinds of alienation we see among America's young people."
Youth, she said, are increasingly straying from participating in the political system. Rahn depicted this trend with a graph from Monitoring the Future, a survey conducted by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA). The graph showed a decline in the number of young people who have or intended to participate in politics — writing their public officials or volunteering for political campaigns. Young people, though, according to Rahn, are participating in other community affairs and events. This involvement, she said, may be a result of the introduction of service learning requirements in many high schools. "I do think that the larger political environment is working to create in young people not only a distrust in incumbent political officials but also a fundamental unhappiness, or at least an ambivalence or indifference, about the American political system."
Some, she said, have recognized the problem the nation is experiencing and are trying to reinvigorate the field of civic education. Rahn noted that politicians and public officials bear some of the responsibility to address the lack of attachment and unhappiness with politics and the nation's political system.
Representative Rush Holt, a first-term Democrat from New Jersey, ended the briefing by making a few remarks. Holt said that he has wrestled for many years with the issue of the erosion of public trust in government. He suggested that campaign finance reform could help restore confidence and trust in the political system. Not only is trust important, Holt said that trust in government programs is also a matter of national importance. Echoing the remarks of the speakers, he concluded that we must find a way to increase students' understanding and appreciation of the political process.
Edited transcripts of the briefing are will be available soon. Contact COSSA for more information.