Harry Targ
“As of April 2024, 22% of Americans say they trust the
government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (2%) or “most
of the time” (21%). Last year, 16% said they trusted the government just about
always or most of the time, which was among the lowest measures in nearly seven
decades of polling.”
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/24/public-trust-in-government-1958-2024/
What is a
Legitimacy Crisis?
Theorists as varied as Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, and a variety of American
political scientists have written in their own ways about “legitimacy” of
political institutions and how degrees of it affect stability and change. We
can say that a “legitimacy crisis” exists when there is a substantial decline
in the level of support for particular regimes, governmental institutions
and/or the political leadership of a country.
Polling data from 1964 (when Lyndon Johnson won a huge election victory over
conservative opponent Senator Barry Goldwater) until 1976 (at the end of the
eight-year period of the Nixon/Ford administration) indicated a dramatic
decline in the trust that the American people had in the government. In 1964
seventy-five percent of the people said they trusted their government “always
or most of the time.” That declined to thirty percent in 1976. The slide
continued until 1980. By 1984 President Reagan’s popularity boosted trust to
over forty percent. Then a decline followed bottoming out at twenty percent
during the mid-1990s. Trust in government increased after 9/11 in 2002 but by
2007 had declined again to 26 percent. Now, as the Pew Research Center reports
(see the link above), 22 percent of those surveyed trust their government at
least some of the time. While we can quibble over the meaning of numbers,
methodologies, and questions asked, the general thrust of the data indicates a
substantial decline in support for government and its leaders since the 1960s;
spurred by Vietnam, Watergate, and economic crisis at home. As popular as
Ronald Reagan was, he never reached the level of support held by Presidents
Eisenhower and Johnson. One can only assume that the rise of Trump, the bizarre
rulings by the US Supreme Court, and the lackluster and ill-defined policies of
the Biden Administration have solidified the basic legitimacy crises of our own
day.
The Vietnam Syndrome
As to foreign policy, polling data, protest activity, and pressure from
influential and grassroots lobbying groups led politicians “inside the beltway”
to conclude that the American people did not want their country to engage in
another long, unwinnable, and controversial war again, such as Vietnam. Thus
every presidential administration from Jimmy Carter on regarded with scorn the
constraint that the “Vietnam Syndrome” placed on their capacity to act in an
overt and massive military way overseas. President George Herbert Walker Bush
confirmed this perceived constraint when he announced at the press conference
ending the first Gulf War: “At last we have licked the Vietnam Syndrome!” He
probably was premature in his exuberance.
More recently, political scientist John Mueller refined the idea of the
“Vietnam Syndrome” by studying polling data from U.S. participation in three
wars, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. He found a common trend in declining support
for these wars. Namely duration and casualties (particularly number killed) are
correlated with the systematic decline in support for the wars in question.
When a president sends troops into combat, temporarily, the people “rally round
the flag.” But as wars continue support declines. And today, historically high
military expenditures at home and huge transfers of US military aid to support
wars in Ukraine, Izrael/Gaza, and “threats” in the South China Sea, can only
reinforce the skepticism that used to be called “the Vietnam Syndrome.”
Meanings of the Past
What is relevant about all this for today? Are there enough similarities
between now and the 1970s to learn from the past? What is different today from
the 1970s? Is there anything to be gleaned about the “consciousness of the
American people” at various points in time that bear on the question of how to
build a progressive majority and against more war and for social justice?
The 1976 candidate for president, Jimmy Carter, ran on a program, he hoped, to
bring the disenchanted anti-war activists back into the mainstream political
process. He said he would “learn the lessons of Vietnam,” cut military
spending, and most importantly use human rights as the primary criteria for
foreign policy. He also pledged to continue the policies of “détente” that his
predecessor had initiated with the Soviet Union.
The anti-war movements and social justice movements of the mid-1970s, never
well-organized or interconnected continued to disintegrate. After two years of
modest efforts as promised, the Carter Administration tilted back toward the
Cold War policies of its predecessors, spurred on by the trauma the collapse of
the Shah of Iran created in the foreign policy establishment. The Iranian
revolution was followed by revolutionary change in Grenada, Nicaragua, and
reformism on the horizon in El Salvador. In the summer, 1979, Carter signed a
secret directive authorizing covert assistance to anti-Soviet rebels who were
launching a war against the secular, Marxist regime that had come to power in
Afghanistan.
In other words, as the social movements of the 1960s and 70s dissolved,
American foreign policy returned to its historic struggle against revolutionary
ferment, albeit in a more covert way. It was candidate Reagan who took the
struggle for legitimacy further by promising a more aggressive foreign policy
that would lead to victory against the Soviet Union, “the evil empire.” Even
so, Reagan had to gradually bring the American people along to military
intervention by invading and winning a one-week war in Grenada, and developing
a covert strategy to fight communism in Central America, Southern Africa, the
Horn of Africa, and Southeast and South Asia called “low intensity conflict.”
U.S. military intervention was “low intensity” for Americans while it was “high
intensity” for peoples of the Global South.
Relevance for Today
Where is the consciousness of the American people in 2024? First, the wars
against Afghanistan and Iraq, the illegal and immoral incarcerations and
torture of suspected “terrorists,” egregious shifting of government funds to
contractors tied to the administration, media manipulation and an host of other
unethical and criminal acts stimulated a substantial decline in legitimacy of
government in the years of the Bush presidency. The campaign of Barack Obama,
by contrast, mobilized masses of people to the political process in the hope
that government could be made to work for the American people. His first six
months in office, however, raised some questions about the new administration's
ability to deliver on the hope. Today, the citizenry is told that the US must
lead the way in supporting “democracy” over “autocracy.”
In general, I believe we can conclude that despite ups and downs in levels of
support for government since the end of World War II, there has been a
substantial downward trajectory in support for government institutions and
personnel. The American people are suspicious of their government and distrust
their leaders. Many believe that government has been an impediment to the
health and happiness of the people. Episodes of scandal, from Watergate to Iran
Contra, to Monicagate, to the Trump and Biden legal hurdles reinforce the
skepticism about government. And poll after poll indicate that vast majorities
of Americans support Medicare for All, good schools, livable wages, reductions
in the grotesque gaps between the rich and poor, and the right for workers to
join unions.
In the 1970s, mass movements were dissipating. Today such movements, initiated
over the last eight years, continue to grow. They are reinforced by the most
significant economic crises for about forty percent of the population since the
1930s. Without mass movements, the twin consciousnesses of the America people
as to legitimacy and foreign policy provide little hope for building a
progressive majority. In fact, the legitimacy crisis, if not addressed with a
progressive alternative vision of what government can be, can lead to massive
alienation, right-wing populism, and violence.
Building a progressive majority, at this time, should include making our peace
and justice organizations strong, presenting compelling images of what
government can and should do, and strategizing about how the mass movements can
demand participation in government. As to foreign policy, our campaigns should
emphasize the length of our wars and the casualties resulting to Americans and
victims in host countries, along with our arguments about the imperial
underpinnings of such wars.
Even though the present and the future do not merely repeat the past, the past
can inform what we do today,
United for
Peace and Justice
