If There Were Ever a Time for Bipartisanship, It Is Now

“COVID-19 presents a unique opportunity for governments to build trust. According to a recent update of the 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in government around the world spiked by eleven points between January and May 2020.”

Americans have trust issues. Over the past decade, their confidence in Congress, the executive branch, the judicial branch, the media, and other institutions has steadily eroded. Since the early 1990s, the proportion of Americans who told Gallup that they trust these institutions a “great deal” or “quite a lot” has been consistently shrinking. This is particularly true for the legislative branch; over the past decade, an average of just ten point four percent of Americans expressed firm trust in Congress in annual surveys.

While there are many explanations for this phenomenon, political polarization is almost certainly at the top of the list. According to Pew Research Center (which has been tracking polarization in the U.S. for decades), Americans’ attitudes towards just about every category of public policy have become more partisan over the past twenty-five years. In 1994, sixty-four percent of Republicans were more conservative than the median Democrat, while seventy percent of Democrats were more liberal than the median Republican. Those numbers have shifted to ninety-seven percent and ninety-five percent, respectively.

One of the main reasons Americans are critical of Congress is the (accurate) perception of surging partisanship and gridlock in Washington. When Gallup asked what’s the “most important thing you want your representative in Congress to do,” the second-most popular choice (behind “listen to the people”) was “end gridlock.” And for the voters who say they disapprove of Congress, the top three reasons they cite are “party gridlock,” “not getting anything done,” and “care too much about politics, not about country.” These attitudes extend to the executive branch, as well. It’s no surprise that the judicial branch, which Americans regard as the most apolitical branch of government, is also the one they trust the most.

These trends interact with one another; as the country becomes more partisan, our institutions become more dysfunctional, and trust continues to break down. This lack of trust has been exploited by populists on the Right and the Left, who argue that institutions are indifferent or actively hostile to the interests of most Americans. For example, President Trump has launched a sustained assault on the independent judiciary (incessantly arguing that rulings he doesn’t like are politically motivated). He describes the press as the “enemy of the people” and constantly declares that major media outlets are peddling “fake news,” and he claims there’s a “deep state” within the United States federal government bent on removing him from power.