Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Voters say they have nothing to fear more than government itself

Broken American flag
natasaadzic/Getty Images

There's fresh evidence that anxiety about the many ways American democracy is malfunctioning remains very high in the national consciousness.

More than a third of Americans now view the government itself as the top problem in the United States, the Gallup survey out Monday finds. Those results offer all candidates now running for office a clear rationale for elevating plans to "fix the system" closer to the top of their policy agendas.

So far, however, proposals for reforming democracy have received minimal attention in the 2020 campaign — neither in the presidential race that's been underway all year nor in the hundreds of congressional and state legislative contests just starting to gel.


President Trump, whose upset victory was spurred in part by impassioned promises to "drain the swamp," essentially never mentions that aspiration any more. And while all the top-tier Democratic candidates have unveiled proposals for tackling some of the system's perceived shortcomings, talk about them has been next to nonexistent in their stump speeches or in the first four nationally televised debates.

To the extent Democrats have talked of healing democracy's wounds, it has been to profess broad agreement about the corrupting influence of big money on policymaking and the dangers of Trump flouting democratic norms and upsetting the balance of powers. There's been minimal discussion of their concrete proposals for regulating campaign finance or raising Congress and the courts back on par with the executive branch — and even less talk about ways to bolster confidence in American elections, expand voting rights, ease access to the ballot box or get politicians out of the business of choosing their own constituents.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

There's ample reason for that to change in light of Gallup's latest findings — which show that just 11 percent of Democrats and 26 percent of independents describe themselves as satisfied with the country's direction. And the number of Republicans professing satisfaction dropping sharply in the past month as well.

One big reason is a surge of anxiety that's almost surely a result of the House's launch of a move toward Trump's impeachment: 34 percent volunteered the government, poor leadership or politicians as the most important problem facing the country — up 11 percentage points since September and just a single point shy of the record, set this February after the end of the longest partial federal government shutdown in history.

The current 34 percent are broadly bipartisan: 41 percent of Democrats and 36 percent of Republicans, and each of those shares has jumped 13 points in a month. Independent are marginally more sanguine about the government: 27 percent say it's worry No. 1, an 8-point rise since summer ended.)

But the blame for the government's ills exposes a sharp partisan divide: Republicans mention Congress and political parties way more than Democrats, who cite the president and impeachment most often.

At least as worrisome for the country, however, is that the government-is-the-problem number has been high for a very long stretch.

Gallup has been tracking the public's views of the nation's most important problems for eight decades. In each month for the five years after the Great Recession started in 2008, economic-related issues topped the list volunteered by the voters. But the trend during the Trump administration is rivaling that for consistency. "Government," which takes in negative comments about leadership and politicians, has been the top problem in all but three of the Gallup's 34 soundings since January 2017. (Immigration topped the list the other times.)

Before a spike of 33 percent during the 2013 budget standoff between President Barack Obama and a divided Congress, the highest share of voters naming the government as America's biggest problem was 26 percent just before President Richard Nixon was forced to resign in the Watergate scandal.

The latest poll is based on a survey conducted Oct. 1-13 of 1,526 U.S. adults. The margin of error is 3 percentage points.

Read More

Large Bipartisan Majorities Oppose Deep Cuts to Foreign Aid

The Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland releases a new survey, fielded February 6-7, 2025, with a representative sample of 1,160 adults nationwide.

Pexels, Tima Miroshnichenko

Large Bipartisan Majorities Oppose Deep Cuts to Foreign Aid

An overwhelming majority of 89% of Americans say the U.S. should spend at least one percent of the federal budget on foreign aid—the current amount the U.S. spends on aid. This includes 84% of Republicans and 94% of Democrats.

Fifty-eight percent oppose abolishing the U.S. Agency for International Development and folding its functions into the State Department, including 77% of Democrats and 62% of independents. But 60% of Republicans favor the move.

Keep ReadingShow less
A Super Bowl of Unity

A crowd in a football stadium.

Getty Images, Adamkaz

A Super Bowl of Unity

Philadelphia is known as the City of Brotherly Love, and perhaps it is fitting that the Philadelphia Eagles won Sunday night's Super Bowl 59, given the number of messages of unity, resilience, and coming together that aired throughout the evening.

The unity messaging started early as the pre-game kicked off with movie star Brad Pitt narrating a moving ad that champions residence and togetherness in honor of those who suffered from the Los Angeles fires and Hurricane Helen:

Keep ReadingShow less
The Paradox for Independents

A handheld American Flag.

Canva Images

The Paradox for Independents

Political independents in the United States are not chiefly moderates. In The Independent Voter, Thomas Reilly, Jacqueline Salit, and Omar Ali make it clear that independents are basically anti-establishment. They have a "mindset" that aims to dismantle the duopoly in our national politics.

I have previously written about different ways that independents can obtain power in Washington. First, they can get elected or converted in Washington and advocate with their own independent voices. Second, they can seek a revolution in which they would be the most dominant voice in Washington. And third, a middle position, they can seek a critical mass in the Senate especially, namely five to six seats, which would give them leverage to help the majority party get to 60 votes on policy bills.

Keep ReadingShow less
The Bureaucrat’s Dilemma When Dealing with a Charismatic Autocrat

A single pawn separated from a group of pawns.

Canva Images

The Bureaucrat’s Dilemma When Dealing with a Charismatic Autocrat

Excerpt from To Stop a Tyrant by Ira Chaleff

In my book To Stop a Tyrant, I identify five types of a political leader’s followers. Given the importance of access in politics, I range these from the more distant to the closest. In the middle are bureaucrats. No political leader can accomplish anything without a cadre of bureaucrats to implement their vision and policies. Custom, culture and law establish boundaries for a bureaucrat’s freedom of action. At times, these constraints must be balanced with moral considerations. The following excerpt discusses ways in which bureaucrats need to thread this needle.

Keep ReadingShow less