For many Americans, the Republican dysfunction that has ground business in the U.S. House to a halt as two wars rage abroad and a budget crisis looms at home is feeding into a longer-term pessimism about the country\u2019s core institutions.
The lack of faith extends beyond Congress, with recent polling conducted both before and after the leadership meltdown finding a mistrust in everything from the courts to organized religion. The GOP internal bickering that for nearly three weeks has left open the\u2002speaker\u2019s position \u2014 second in line to the presidency \u2014 is widely seen as the latest indication of deep problems with the nation\u2019s bedrock institutions.
\u201cThey\u2019re holding up the people\u2019s business because they\u2019re so dysfunctional,\u201d said Christopher Lauff, 57, of Fargo, N.D.
Part of that business, he said, is approving money for Ukraine to continue its fight against Russia\u2019s invasion, something he says ultimately helps the U.S. \u2014 a point President Biden stressed Thursday during an Oval Office address.
\u201cWe\u2019re usually the knight in shining armor, but we can\u2019t be that now,\u201d said Lauff, a Democrat.
The disdain for Congress is just one area where Americans say they are losing faith. Various polls say the negative feelings include a loss of confidence or interest in institutions such as organized religion, policing, the Supreme Court, even banking.
\u201cTrust in institutions has deteriorated substantially,\u201d said Kay Schlozman, professor of political science at Boston College. Schlozman said she believes in government and the things it provides, such as national defense and access to health care, but \u201cI also can very much understand why the American people can be cynical about government.\u201d
The turmoil in the House and the federal case against Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, who is facing charges for bribery, show that both major parties are contributing to the dour outlook.
The House has been without a permanent leader since early October after a small cadre of right-wing Republicans pushed out a member of their own party, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Subsequent attempts to replace him have failed.
\u201cThat is an example of exactly the kind of thing that I would say can\u2019t foster trust of government among the American people \u2014 the multiple votes, the fractiousness within parties, of people being personally ambitious and not being willing to compromise\u201d Schlozman said.
About half of adults (53%) say they have \u201chardly any confidence at all\u201d in the people running Congress, according to a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that was conducted in October. That\u2019s in line with 49% who said that in March. Just 3% have a great deal of confidence in Congress, virtually unchanged from March.
About 4 in 10 adults (39%) have hardly any confidence in the executive branch of the federal government, compared with 44% in March. Most Republicans (56%) have low levels of confidence in the executive branch \u2014 which is overseen by President Biden, a Democrat \u2014 compared with just 20% of Democrats.
About a third of adults (36%) say they have hardly any confidence in the conservative-majority Supreme Court, a figure that has remained steady in recent months. The polling reinforces that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say their confidence in the Supreme Court is low. Black Americans are more likely than Americans overall, as well as more likely than white or Latino adults, to have hardly any confidence in the nation\u2019s highest court.
One-third of U.S. adults (33%) continue to have low levels of confidence in the Justice Department, with Republicans having less confidence than Democrats. This comes as former President Trump rails against the department after being charged with mishandling classified documents and attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Rick Cartelli, 63, a healthcare worker in Rocky Hill, Conn., who identifies as an independent, said he is happy with his local and state government but the current environment, especially the chaos on Capitol Hill, has wiped out what little confidence he had in that institution.
\u201cWhat is happening now is not good for the country at all,\u201d he said.
Cartelli also said he has little confidence in the executive branch, citing what he says are \u201cmental lapses\u201d by Biden that \u201care only probably going to become more and more pronounced.\u201d
Multiple AP-NORC polls from earlier this year find that the dearth of confidence is pervasive, spreading to organized religion, the government\u2019s intelligence gathering and diplomatic agencies, as well as financial institutions. Slightly fewer than half (45%) in a study from AP-NORC and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights said they have little or no confidence that the news media are reporting news fully, accurately and fairly.
Views on the military were best, with just 17% saying they have hardly any confidence in it.
Kathleen Kersey, a 32-year-old healthcare worker in Brunswick, Ga., who is a Republican, said she has little confidence in any of the federal entities, including Congress, but has more for the institutions closer to home. She also is a fan of Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, who she said is a moral man.
\u201cThere\u2019s only so much one person can do, and just with all the evil, it\u2019s hard to have confidence in anything really, even the churches because everything works together as one,\u201d she said.
Confidence in the country\u2019s foundational institutions has ebbed and flowed historically, though there\u2019s been a long-term downward trend since at least the 1970s. Trust in government waned in the era of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers before making a slight recovery during Ronald Reagan\u2019s presidency in the 1980s \u2014 despite Reagan\u2019s famous declaration that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were: \u201cI\u2019m from the government, and I\u2019m here to help.\u201d
David Bateman, an associate professor of government at Cornell University, said the tea party movement during former President Obama\u2019s term was the beginning of a steadier decline in confidence, as noted in polling from Gallup. But Bateman believes the most acute problem in recent years has been Trump\u2019s lies about the 2020 election, despite dozens of courts rejecting his claims and multiple audits and reviews in the swing states where he disputed his loss.
\u201cThe biggest threat to trust in institutions was the Trump campaign\u2019s refusal to concede the election and insistence that they had won,\u201d along with a large segment of the Republicans in Congress going along with the claim in the certification process, Bateman said.
\u201cThat validated the idea that the whole institutional system is rigged, which it isn\u2019t,\u201d he said.
He said an example of the fallout is the Republican attack on the Justice Department, including the FBI. The \u201cweaponization\u201d of the FBI has been a battle cry for Republicans who maintain it has targeted conservatives and who are incensed at the various investigations of Trump. Candidates vying against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination have said they would fire FBI Director Chris Wray.
Distrust of the FBI had long been the purview of Democrats, especially those aware of civil-rights-era monitoring.
\u201cIf you told me in 2000 that Republicans are going to be saying you can\u2019t trust the FBI, I would have been shocked,\u201d Bateman said. \u201cGoing after the FBI has been a real ratcheting up of distrust.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n