In President Obama's State of the Union address, he raised the profoundly important issue of public trust. He cited a lack of public trust in our institutions, in our government and in the media. He called for a recommitment to regain this trust.
To do that, we have to recognize that we face more than a deficit of dollars right now. We face a deficit of trust -- deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years. To close that credibility gap we must take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly and to give our people the government they deserve.
What he didn't say - or, perhaps, what he couldn't say - is that he can expect no help from the Republican Party. It is simply not in their interest to promote trust in government. In fact, it is fundamental to their goals of regaining and retaining power to aggressively promote distrust in government.
After the election of Ronald Reagan, the Republican right pursued two crucial and related goals: to dismantle the workings of government, and to thoroughly discredit the media.
To achieve the first goal, the Republican Party launched a relentless and cynical campaign to demonize all forms of government. The purpose was to persuade the public that government is not only ineffective and incompetent, it is actually the enemy of the people. If they could persuade the public of this "truth," then public trust in government would continue to erode - as it has, faster in the past thirty years than at any other point in our history.
Mission accomplished.
What made this strategy so clever was that it was only a means to an end - getting the public to support their tax cut policies. Distrust of government on a large enough scale would lead the public would to blindly support tax cuts, even if the tax cuts did not directly benefit them or, in some cases, actually harmed them.
As a result of this narrow, selfish and, ultimately, successful ideology, the country experienced thirty years of regressive tax policy, the consequences of which are being played out in states throughout the union: No money for essential government services, especially health and education.
Mission accomplished.
[Ironically, nearly every state has been helped by President Obama's stimulus bill that so many Republican politicians rail against in order to score political points with the "anti-big government" crowd. Funny, that.]
And then there was the other essential element of the Republican strategy. Sowing distrust in the government and other public institutions would not fully succeed unless they could establish a similar distrust of the media. If the public is unwilling to trust the media, then it is that much easier to create your own version of "reality" and successfully pass it off as truth. As Lee Atwater said, "Perception is reality."
So, along with the attacks on government came equally relentless attacks on the so-called "liberal media." By repeating and repeating this myth for thirty years, the Republican party sought to embed the notion in the public conscious that there is no such thing as a trusted news source.
The public, to a shockingly large extent, bought it. Millions of our citizens, in poll after poll, express their belief that neither the media nor the government can be invested with our trust. They are not just skeptical, as every informed citizen ought to be; they believe that government and the "liberal media" are twin evils that have no place in the "real America."
Mission accomplished.
As journalist and media scholar Michael Skoler points out, trust in the media has been declining for 25 years.
A new poll confirms one reason why the public doesn’t value mainstream news. They don’t trust it. Public Policy Polling asked a sample of 1,151 registered voters if they trusted each of 5 TV news networks. From one third to one half said yes, depending on the network. Not a ringing endorsement. The results are in line with other polls on trust in journalism, and that trust has been steadily declining for over 25 years.
The Internet provides people with huge choice about where and how to get news and information. And if people are paying less attention to mainstream news media, it’s because they don’t find it trustworthy, relevant and valuable to their daily lives. That’s what needs to be fixed.
When there is no "truth," when there are no "facts," when there is no trust, when government and the media are your enemy, how much easier is it to sell fear, misinformation and outright lies to the public in order to achieve your ideological objectives? This is precisely what the Republican party has done for thirty years, and did even more expertly during the Bush Administration. They have re-doubled their efforts during the first year of the Obama Administration.
The results of their strategy? The Iraq war, an economic collapse of historical proportions, environmental degradation on an unimaginable scale, crumbling infrastructure, crumbling schools, state and local governments that are broke and broken, a health care system that is a global embarrassment, and a crushing federal deficit that will severely hamper any attempt by a Democratic administration to do anything substantial - as we've witnessed during the health care debate, when suddenly, now that the Republicans are no longer in office, the dangerous effects of "reckless spending" and increasing the deficit and have become the new "reality" the Republican Party is trying to sell to a very anxious public.
Mission accomplished.
Amidst all this wreckage, President Obama took office. And when he tries to "set the record straight" in his State of the Union address about the size of the deficit he inherited, he is accused by the New York Times - the New York Times! - poster child of the "liberal media," of sounding "defensive."
So here we go again: a president lays out the simple fact that he inherited an economic crisis and a $1.2 trillion deficit that was created during eight years of a Republican Administration, which is something the public must be reminded of as the country navigates the treacherous waters of health care reform - and the reporter covering the speech feels compelled to label this "defensive," which immediately diminishes the value of Obama's words as a statement of truth and implicitly calls into question his other subsequent claims.
Mission accomplished.
So, how persuasive was President Obama? Will the Republicans abandon their strategy of obstruction-at-all-costs and decide that maybe they, too, have a stake in making government work again?
I think it is highly unlikely. The election in Massachusetts demonstrated that the Republican Party can continue to be obstructionist, continue to spread blatant falsehoods and misinformation through a compliant media, continue to be the party the public blames the most for the problems in Washington - and still win an election!
Does anyone think they are suddenly going to have a change of heart?
Lee Atwater, architect of much of the Republican Strategy that led directly to the terrible divisiveness in American politics, fell gravely ill in 1990 from a brain tumor. He came to repent many of the actions he had taken during his political heyday.
My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.
Bill Clinton failed to lead us through the 90's. George W. Bush failed to lead us through the first decade of the 21st Century. A year ago there was great hope that Barack Hussein Obama could lead us through the second decade. There is still good reason to hope that he will.
But, as he said tonight, he cannot do it alone.
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