Americans short on reasons to trust: Column
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, USATODAY
Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images
The White House behind a dual layer of fencing.
There's a connection between the Secret Service's Colombian hooker scandal and Americans' increased worry about Ebola. Both have to do with trust.
Until recently, if you'd asked Americans to pick government institutions characterized by efficiency and professionalism, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Secret Service would likely have been at the top of the list. In both cases, recent evidence now suggests otherwise. And that's especially destructive because both agencies depend on trust to do their jobs.
In the case of the Secret Service, the story comes in two parts — first, the 2012 scandal involving Secret Service agents boozing and carousing with prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, ahead of a visit by President Obama, and second, the apparent coverup that gave favored treatment to a White House worker who was the son of an Obama donor.
Prostitution is legal in parts of Colombia, but Secret Service agents aren't supposed to be getting drunk and cavorting with hookers while on official business, as that poses an obvious risk to security. When the scandal broke, nearly two dozen Secret Service agents and members of the military on the advance team were fired or punished. But one person got a pass — a White House advance team employee who had a woman, who advertises herself as a hooker, overnight in his room. According to investigators, they got pressure from the White House to delay the report until after the 2012 election, and to "withhold and alter certain information in the report of investigation because it was potentially embarrassing to the administration."
As National Journal's Ron Fournier writes, this stinks for two reasons. First, the working stiffs got punished while the White House insider, son of a major donor, got a pass. And second, this kind of nepotism and dishonesty undermines the necessary bond of trust between the president and the people who protect him. Fournier writes: "The White House played favorites in the investigation. Nepotism in hiring is one thing. Favoritism is another, perhaps worse, sin, particularly when the investigation and punishment reek of elitism."
He adds: "The relationship between the president and the people who would die to protect him is fraught with complexity. The agency works for the president, but the president must heed Secret Service protocols. It only works — the president is only safe — if there is mutual trust. The president must harbor no doubts that the agency is doing everything possible to keep him safe, and that everything the agents see and hear will remain confidential. The agents must know that the president has their backs."
With the trust gone — and with the Secret Service's reputation for ruthless efficiency undermined by this and other bungles — the president is less safe, which is bad for America.
Meanwhile, the CDC's bungles on Ebola have also undermined trust. The CDC has been unclear on how Ebola is transmitted, and has looked clumsy and untrustworthy. Despite the CDC's assurances, Ebola fears persist. As Matthew Continetti writes: "Again, the authorities behave irresponsibly and inscrutably. Again, the faces on our televisions say there is no cause for alarm. ... These dangers are real, and pressing, and though the probability of their occurrence is not high, it is amplified by the staggering incompetence and failure and misplaced priorities of the U.S. government. It is not Ebola I am afraid of. It is our government's ability to deal with Ebola."
The CDC's spate of problems with handling other dangerous pathogens like anthrax, smallpox and deadly influenza samples doesn't inspire much confidence either.
As George Will observed, on Ebola, Americans want to trust the government, but can't. And as MSNBC's Chuck Todd observed, the problem stems not just from the CDC, but from the administration as a whole: "I think one of your challenges though is a trust deficit that has been created over the last 18 months."
In support of this statement, Todd listed a litany of government defaults: The IRS scandal with its mysteriously crashed hard drives and erased emails, Veterans Affairs' lies about wait times, the Secret Service's failures, and more. And he's right. After so many lies and failures, we'd be fools to trust them.
The problem is, we're heading into what looks like a dark period, one when trust in government will be very important to dealing successfully with the many challenges we face. But trust in government comes primarily from one thing: a government that is worthy of trust.
Keep that in mind, come November.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.
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