"On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy made a bold statement. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth," he said in a joint address to Congress.

Today, people might not put much faith in such a promise. At the time, however, polling from the Pew Research Center showed that more than 70% of Americans believed the federal government would do the right thing “just about always.” Such trust made it possible to muster the resources and talent to achieve the president’s pledge.

Government needs this same level of trust now to cope with global pandemics, supply chain crises, opioid epidemics, rising food and gas prices, and a host of difficult cultural challenges. Alas, the same poll shows that trust in government to do what is right always or most of the time has fallen off a cliff, dropping to around 20% in 2022.

The Trust Barometer, produced by global communications firm Edelman, confirms this trend. “The United States and United Kingdom …. have done nothing to improve their trust standing and will need to take more proactive measures if their current administrations want to be more confident about surviving the next election cycle,” a summary of the 2022 findings states."