- A new $4 from the Pew Research Center found public
trust in the USgovernment is near historic lows. - The decline began around the time of
Watergate and has not recovered to pre-Nixon high levels of trust.
Fifty years ago this week, the
"It's a hugely important historic moment," Julian Zelizer, a historian and professor at Princeton University, $4. "And we entered a new era when it was over."
Along with the Vietnam war, the 1972 break-in at the Watergate Hotel — and former president
Public trust in the government, measured by the percentage of people who say they trust the government to do what is right "just about always" or "most of the time," averaged approximately 62% in 1968 prior to
After Nixon left office, that number was 36%.
Since then, the $4 indicates, public trust in the government has fallen to its current average of 20%. While trust in the government briefly spiked to 54% following the 9/11 attack on New York, the downward trend has remained consistent for nearly 50 years.
"The trust has never really rebounded to the pre-Watergate levels," Joycelyn Kiley, Pew's associate director of research, $4.
Trust in the government was consistently at its lowest since during the
Under president Joe Biden, trust has risen to 20-24%.
"The Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers and Watergate … fundamentally rewrote the relationship between the American people and their government," Garrett M. Graff, author of the book "$4," $4, "and caused a collapse in the public's faith in those institutions that our nation's leaders are still struggling with today."