Applause, sweet applause.

• Author: Boulard, Garry
• Position: Improved trust in state government - Includes related article on public opinion and state legislatures

Maybe it's just the effect of the booming economy, but trust in state government is improving.

In a new era of good feelings, no level of government scores as high as the states when it comes to the question of whom do you trust to handle problems.

That's very good news indeed for state legislators who, like their counterparts on the national level, have been subjected in recent years to a rising level of voter cynicism and distrust.

Some 81 percent of respondents to a comprehensive study in 1997 and 1998 by the Pew Center for the People & the Press said they trusted the states either a "great deal" or a "fair amount" to take care of important problems. The problem-solving ability of local government also scored high - 78 percent. The feds snared only a 60 percent rating on the same question.

The Pew study, called "Deconstructing Distrust - How Americans View Government," also reveals how the states' fortunes have fluctuated with Washington's. Only 25 years ago, but just before the Watergate scandal exploded, 70 percent of respondents said they had a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the federal government to handle problems, while only 63 percent viewed the states that way.

Similarly, those who didn't trust the states was at an all-time high in 1972 - 33 percent. That number has melted to only 18 percent today.

But a lack of confidence in Washington, D.C., has moved from 29 percent in 1972 to 40 percent today.

The Pew report comes during a time when other studies and polls are showing that people like their government. It's a phenomenon that many observers would have thought impossible only six years ago. Voter hostility forced successful tax roll-back initiatives and term limit movements in nearly half the states, and the two presidential campaigns with the most energy - Pat Buchanan's bid for the Republican nomination in 1992 and Ross Perot's third party independent bid in the same year - were also the most angry.

The University of Michigan's American National Election Studies survey, for example, reveals that for the first time since the mid-1980s the overall trust level in government is on the rise. It has been since 1994, when the survey recorded the lowest trust in government since the study's inception in 1964.

Four years ago only 21 percent of the study's respondents indicated any trust at all in government, compared with 40 percent today.

But as Andy Kohut, the director of the Pew Center, points out, today's positive numbers are minnows compared with the early- and mid-1960s when most Americans thought their government could do no wrong. Then more than 65 percent of respondents said they trusted the government to do what is right always or most of the time. The numbers in support of a wide array of government programs also were consistently high during that period.

SOMETHING'S GONE RIGHT

How to explain the suddenly changed fortunes for government both at the state and national level?

"It's the economy," contends Fred Yang, vice president for Peter Hart Research in Washington, D.C. "People are feeling very good about the economy, and a growing economy lifts all boats."

"When the economy is doing well, people get the impression that their lawmakers - both state and federal - are doing something right," agrees Hal Bruno, the political commentator for ABC News. "And that is pretty much what we're seeing today. The economy has been very good for three or four years straight. Eventually it. has to have an effect on how voters view their government."

Of course, economically buoyant times do not always guarantee voter satisfaction with incumbents. In 1964, for example, the coattails of Lyndon Johnson, who won the largest popular vote in American history that year, dragged in more than 500 state legislative seats for the...