On A Mission To Establish Trust In Our Government

by Rachel Stockman

On a cold January day in 1961, President John F. Kennedy approached the inaugural podium to declare words that served as a beacon for faith in government by the American people. He declared, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." With these words, Patricia McGinnis, head of the Council for Excellence in Government, contended, "John Kennedy drew a whole gen-eration to public service." With this call to action, President Kennedy not only promoted involvement in government, but he also inspired young people to make their voices heard so governmental policies could aptly represent its citizens.

That was then. Today, youth seem to be disenfranchised by government. They lack a fun-damental trust that government seeks to represent them. According to a recent poll conducted by the Council for Excellence in Government, Ms. McGinnis noted that this feeling doesn’t just pertain to young people, but to the general public, further commenting, "The majority of the American public refers to government as "the government," as opposed to "our government."

What causes this lack of trust in government? Ms. McGinnis responded by saying that it all really started during the triumph in investigative journalism during the Watergate scandal. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein unveiled truths about the paranoiac activities and directives of President Richard Nixon. While their reporting coup represented a great achievement in journalism, it also unleashed an overall decline of trust in governmental actions. "It created a culture of journalists who were digging for negativities and scandals," Ms. McGinnis told TeenSpeak. Since then, our society has generated "a news machine that needs to be fed."

Additionally, a recent poll commissioned by the Council for Excellence in Government, disclosed a major cause of the public’s distrust in government results from the general under-standing that elected officials do not keep their promises and they pursue personal goals instead of public agenda. "Government officials are seen as self-serving in the media’s portrayal of them," Ms. McGinnis asserted. President Kennedy’s idealistic concept of government, which was enthusiastically embraced by a generation has suffered close to death experiences through the decades following his presidency.