Denial of State: Americans literally can't believe popular public programs are public.

AuthorDrutman, Lee

Perhaps no image makes liberals more likely to palm their foreheads than the infamous photo of a Tea Party protestor with a sign declaring, "KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF MY MEDICARE!"

But Medicare is a government program! shouts the frustrated liberal. If only these people knew!

But why don't these people know? For one, most people experience Medicare not as a government service but as a direct interaction with their doctors. Government is frequently invisible in the process. But it isn't just the government's invisibility that's the problem. Most people are quite happy with their Medicare coverage, and many Americans have become so convinced that government programs are low quality and inefficient that the idea that a high-quality service could be from the government doesn't compute. They think it must be private.

So explains Amy E. Lerman in a new book, Good Enough for Government Work. It's an important and well-timed publication. Democratic presidential contenders are now proposing major new government programs, such as Medicare for All (most Democrats), universal child care (Elizabeth Warren), and a federal jobs guarantee (Cory Booker).

If these programs are to have a chance of becoming law and succeeding, supporters will need to confront the public reputation crisis head on. To do so, they'll need to break down its underlying causes and work to change public opinion. Lerman, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has provided a great guide for doing so.

First, the good news: in polls, majorities of Americans say they would like government to solve public problems and provide more services. But--and this is the key--many of these same people also think government is inefficient and wasteful. And so while in theory they'd prefer a government solution, in practice they don't have faith that government can get it done.

This mind-set is the product of more than four decades of undifferentiated government bashing. It began in the 1970s and '80s as a project of the political right, when undermining faith in government was a way for businesses to shut down economic regulations and for socially conservative whites to weaken civil rights programs. "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help,'" quipped Ronald Reagan. The credibility of thousands of public servants vanished.

Bill Clinton picked up the baton and, to switch metaphors, dug the knife in deeper. In his 1993 State...

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