A new Pew poll released today found that the number of Americans who are anti-government has risen since Obama took office. While Congress often frustrates the populace, faith in it is now at an all-time low. People have also become more distrustful of the federal government's institutions, like the Department of Education. And they're not just frustrated -- they're angry, too. Twenty-one percent expressed anger, topping the previous high of 20 percent in 2006 and double the measures from the late 1990s.
Anyone who's paid attention to the Tea Party rallies won't be surprised that 57 percent of them thought the government was a major threat to their freedom, while 30 percent surveyed overall subscribed to that view. Since Obama took office, the number of people who say the government should be smaller has gone up:
We've had some backlash," [Pew Center Director Andrew] Kohut says. "Washington and politics have poisoned the well in terms of trust in government.
Kohut says that part of what's going on is a perfect storm of bad economic conditions and the bitter partisanship in Congress. Some of that no doubt has to do with the way the health-care reform debate played out, but I think it's hard to overstate the role of race. When people talk about the role racism plays in the Tea Party and anti-government movements, they tend to focus solely on the fact that Obama is black. Many rightly point out that those same people would be against any Democratic president's efforts to expand the role the government plays in the health-care market. Part of that is racism, no matter the color of the president's skin. Conservatives have done such a spectacular job of romanticizing the white working class that conservatives don't see the government as looking out for their interests at all. Instead they insist on portraying the government as an entity solely interested in taking their hard-earned money and redistributing it to a stereotype, to inner-city people of color, who don't work and just get handouts from a sympathetic government. Any effort, by anyone, to watch out for people will always be colored by that viewpoint.
-- Monica Potts
