Here are a few numbers (H/T Arnold Kling):
According to Pew, public trust in government is very low and declining:
Only two-in-ten Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (2%) or “most of the time” (19%). Trust in the government has declined somewhat since last year, when 24% said they could trust the government at least most of the time.
This decline in trust is occurring among Republicans:
9% of Republicans and Republican-leaners [they trust government just about always or most of the time]
It’s also occurring among Democrats:
29% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they trust government just about always or most of the time
Will Marshall, founder and president of Progressive Policy Institute, notes that:
Paul Light of the Brookings Institution, a leading expert on public attitudes toward government, reports that demand for “very major” reform of government is at a 20-year high, rising from just 37 percent in 1997 to 60 percent today.
Light sorts voters into four groups with distinct perspectives on government. The largest (44 percent) is “dismantlers,” who favor smaller government and big changes in how it operates. “Rebuilders” (24 percent) want bigger government but share the dismantlers’ desire for major government reform.
“Expanders” (24 percent) are most enthusiastic about bigger government and less interested in reform. “Streamliners” (10 percent), want smaller government and only some reform.
These numbers indicate that a modest majority of U.S. voters now lean toward smaller government, while a more substantial majority favors big reforms of government.
Marshall further observes that:
Progressives are full of ideas for expanding government but have no plan for fixing government.
As Arnold Kling notes in this post over at In My Tribe, commenting on Marshall:
Marshall’s fear is that the “expanders” have outsized influence in the current Democratic Party.
The same is true for Republicans whose grand new ideas resemble the same big-government policies (expanded child tax credits, federal provision of paid leave, tariffs, no concern for spending and the debt) and cronyist interventions (industrial policy — think the CHIP Act and all the subsidies, tax credits, loan guarantees, and subsidies to favored industries they would like to deploy to “compete” with China) usually favored by the left.
Now, it’s not that Republicans in the past 30 years didn’t support all this stuff; they certainly did so, at least in action if not as much in word, especially when they were in power. But no Republicans weren’t vocally cheerleading for such policies as they are today. In addition, it was once the case that Republicans had lots of genuinely good reform ideas, such as pushing programs that were not federal in nature to the states or to the private sector, getting rid of pointless or destructive agencies, reforming entitlement programs, and improving the budget process to restore fiscal sanity. Yet these sensible sorts of ideas have now certainly taken a backseat to ideas for dirigiste interventions.
Contrary to what many of today’s alleged leading lights on the right are saying, the reform ideas that propelled the success of Ronald Reagan (which was far from perfect from my perspective as all politicians are) would do us well right now. And if they think these ideas to reform the government are outdated, at least they should propose ways to reform Uncle Sam (that are constitutional and not authoritarian in nature, please) rather than simply clamor for more interventions. More government interventions in the current system, with the same incentives and dysfunctions, will only result in bad outcomes.