The Center for American Progress released an expansive report on what Americans want from their government. Conducted by Guy Molyneux, Ruy Teixeira, John Whaley using Peter Hart as pollster, CAP has dug deeper into the question that previous surveys. Instead of simply asking if people want bigger government or smaller government, they simply asked on a variety of issues what the federal government should be doing. The results are sobering, yet there is reason for optimism.
What people want, more than anything else, is for the government to be effective. I can't emphasize this enough. Keep in mind, when this survey talks about effectiveness, it isn't talking about the Washington definition of effectiveness. Washington says you're effective if you pass and sign a bill. Washington says you're effective if you get good poll numbers. This survey indicates that the American people, God bless 'em, believe effectiveness means actually solving problems.
First, the CAP report recaps what other polling is indicating:
The survey asks Americans "when the government in Washington decides to solve a problem, how much confidence do you have that the problem actually will be solved?" This question has been asked periodically by various news organizations over two decades, and the current results represent the lowest level of public confidence ever recorded. Just one-third (33 percent) of adults voice a lot or some confidence, 35 percent have "just a little confidence," and another one-third (31 percent) have no confidence at all. The proportion saying "no confidence" in the past has never before exceeded 23 percent.
Set aside the idea of what government should or should not be doing. The polling indicates the public does not have the confidence that government will get right whatever it decides to do. This low confidence is heavily attributable to the economy, which is seen by the public as both caused by and mishandled by the management in Washington. There is also the failure to properly regulate, failure to effectively fix the problem caused by the failure to properly regulate. Someone in the administration had better realize what Bill Clinton has said is the fourth important quality in a President: "Execute."
The most surprising elements of the report are those that run counter to the conventional wisdom in Washington:
We asked Americans what they think should be the higher priority for improving the federal government: reducing the cost and size of federal government, or improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the federal government? By a decisive margin of 62 percent to 36 percent, people say their priority is making government more efficient and more effective, not reducing its size. In the political center, independents and moderates both cite a clear preference for more effective government (62 percent and 69 percent respectively). Even among the 57 percent of adults who say government is doing too many things today, there is as much sentiment for improving government’s effectiveness (48 percent) as for shrinking government (50 percent).
Republicans will always play to their crazy base that prefers to have our government modeled after that of Somalia, but the vast majority of the American people reject this view. Instead, their anti-government sentiment isn't about government doing "too much" or being "too big." It's about the fact that government isn't doing things well. It's mismanaging wars. It has a dysfunctional legislative process. It's not properly ordering its finances. It's allowing even something as basic as food safety to get screwed up. Oil spills. Mine collapses. Most importantly, it isn't putting people back to work, which is number one on the minds of the American people. If the administration could get a lot better on the execution side of things, confidence in government would improve even in the midst of a deep recession. Ignoring the confirmation process and making far more extensive use of the recess appointment power would be an excellent start.
Twenty-seven percent of the public says both that government is doing too many things today and that government should be improved rather than downsized. These citizens also want to see an expanded role for government in many areas, even including reducing poverty. This is a critical target group for efforts at government reform. Disproportionately white working class (54 percent of the group), this segment offers potential in-roads among a generally hostile constituency.
Members of this group could then be added to those who already think government should do more to solve problems—a group heavily dominated by growing progressive constituencies such as minorities, unmarried women, Millennials, and professionals, to form a potentially formidable coalition.
Working class whites have been the problem constituency for Democrats since Reagan, mainly because of the hot-button cultural issues where they are more conservative than most. But on the question of government, it is clear they share the views of other groups with high rates of poverty: government should do more. With mainstream Republicans no longer aggressively pushing cultural issues, and Democrats largely admitting defeat on issues like guns and LGBT rights, it is astounding that Democrats do not have the white working class vote buttoned up tight. The reason is clear: the Democrats are not aggressively putting those folks back to work. If they did, they'd break the back of the Republican party for a generation.
Other questions can provide us a more direct and clear sense of what responsibilities the American people do and do not want to assign the federal government. In this survey we ask people whether they would like to see the federal government become more or less involved (or not change its involvement) in
five different domestic arenas. As the accompanying graph illustrates, a majority of Americans favor more government involvement in all five of these areas:
- Developing new energy sources
- Improving public schools
- Making college education affordable
- Reducing poverty
- Ensuring access to affordable health care.
The Obama administration has taken action in all five of these areas in which people say they want the government to get more involved. They've managed several things, I believe, very well. The handling of the auto-industry has been tough, but fair. The problem is people don't have the confidence that this administration is getting it right.
The American people want to see action yes, but mainly they want to see those actions translate into actual good results. On that measure, in every area, the American people have nothing to show for the first two years under President Obama. They probably won't ever see any direct benefit (in the form of lower insurance rates) as a result of the law. Access they get (years from now), but affordability is still up in the air. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes people have less confidence in the government's ability to solve problems.
Read the whole thing. This report indicates, contrary to the Washington conventional wisdom, that people do not want to "get government out of our lives." That is a particular obsession reserved only for the extreme right. What they want is for government to do things better. The middle class especially wants government involved in energy, poverty, healthcare and education. The only way they will vote for it, however, is if government does it what it does well.