Wednesday, March 18, 1998

Polls show basic healthiness of American public

By DALE McFEATTERS / Scripps Howard News Service

The civic hand-wringers are fretting over a new poll that shows only about a third of Americans trust their government very much -- and that's up from 20 percent three years ago.

Good. Americans should be skeptical about government; it's what holds Big Brother in check. And it is skepticism, not cynicism. The same poll, done by the Pew Research Center, found that most Americans feel they owe something to the government -- to pay their taxes, to serve in the military in time of war, to claim benefits honestly.

Americans' personal happiness doesn't appear to be bound up with their trust in government; the percentage of people content with their lives is at a 30-year high.

Despite the political damning of "faceless bureaucrats," almost 70 percent of those polled held government workers in favorable regard. Despite the comic and unfair phrase for mindless rage, "going postal," the Postal Service had the highest approval rating of any government agency, 89 percent.

Also ranking high were two agencies often targeted by business groups for hamstringing them in red tape, the FDA, 75 percent, and the EPA, 69 percent.

That suggests something else healthy about the Americans polled: They can make up their own minds.