Early in October, a CBS news poll found that President George W. Bush's approval ratings have reached new lows. A majority of Americans now disapprove of how he is handling the job.
Worse, more than at any time since the Nixon era, there is an edge to the discontent. It seems many in America no longer trust their president.
Trust is the essential glue of a functional society. Trust is what enables us to leave our children with caregivers, to allow financial advisors to handle our life savings, to give subordinates responsibility, to confide in our spouses and lovers, to enjoy a meal prepared by others, to cross the street at the crosswalk, to take a cab in a strange city.
So, too, in political life. Democracies need trust to thrive. Without trust there can be no consent of the governed; no willingness to accept the decisions of our government, to obey laws we may not agree with, to pay our taxes without coercion or to sustain a voluntary army.
When we trust we make ourselves vulnerable to others, even though we cannot be certain what they will do. Trust depends in large part on our assessments of others, our confidence in their trustworthiness. But it also depends on how vulnerable we feel. When we have a lot to lose, it is hard to trust, although it is often at such moments that trust is most valuable.
As the founders of a consulting firm that trains business leaders, non-profit managers and government officials how to establish trusting relations with clients, colleagues and constituents, we look at the president's situation and see a real problem.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, Americans demonstrated enormous trust in their president. Polls showed extraordinary confidence in how President Bush was handling his job, especially his response to terrorism.
Only a trusted president could have taken America into Iraq. Bush's persona as a man of integrity with America's interest at heart, his administration's reputation for competence and Americans' natural inclination to believe in the institution of the presidency all worked to reinforce their confidence that they were not being misled. And, of course, Americans liked George Bush. As our research on the relationship between affect and willingness to trust has shown, when we like someone we are much more willing to trust them.
In the short run, trust can persist even when it is not warranted. Bad outcomes are attributed not to malfeasance but to circumstance. So in the president's case, it seems, we accepted the explanation that the warnings about Al Qaeda weren't clear enough, that he was misled about the WMD, that the costs of occupation could not have been foreseen.
But in the longer run, trust without trustworthiness cannot endure. The plea to "trust me" no longer works.
The public's perception of the president's trustworthiness was already in decline before Hurricane Katrina struck. By then, the president had lost much of the public. Polls showed not only that a majority disapproved of his handling of the presidency, but also that an unusually high percentage were strongly disaffected.
Katrina, for many, confirmed the worst. At a time when trust mattered most, when Americans felt most vulnerable, Americans found little basis for trust. In the face of obvious government incompetence, it was hard to believe in the president's ability. Attempts to place the blame elsewhere, to say that no one could have possibly predicted what had happened, to claim that the head of FEMA was doing a good job, all further eroded his reputation for integrity. And perhaps most devastating for the president, his slow response seemed to demonstrate little empathy. Polls showed that a clear majority of Americans felt Bush did not "care about the needs of people like you."
Trust can endure much, but once broken it is hard to repair. Having lost the public's trust, the president now faces an enormous problem. Now his every action will be judged through a different lens. Even his best efforts will be viewed cynically.
Perhaps more importantly, America has a problem. The damage goes beyond one man. Trust in the institution of government itself has been profoundly shaken. And we will still be rebuilding it, like New Orleans, after this president is gone.
Frederick W. Mayer is associate professor of public policy and political science at Duke University; Darryl Stickel received his Ph.D. from Duke and is the founder of the consulting firm Trust Unlimited. This column originally ran in The Herald-Sun.
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