In Government We Trust?
Americans must find ways to melt down the sullen walls of suspicion we’ve allowed to rise between our people and their government.
Reading reports last week of the Timothy McVeigh trial and reflecting on the horrors of the Oklahoma City bombing, I thought of a much different day almost 31 years ago when we dedicated the Fort Worth federal building. I dug up and re-read my old speech. What I said, so proudly, at that ceremony may sound foolish to many now.
“This building,” I said, “represents the government of the United States - the freest, most approachable and most responsive instrument of public will ever to serve and bless a land under heaven’s canopy.” Some may have smiled, wondering if I overstated. But nobody guffawed. There were, even then, a few sad souls who’d been taught to hate our government. But not violently, like today.
Our Democratic government, I went on, “stands at the apex of evolution, the crowning achievement of civilized man.” I proclaimed it “the least oppressive and most just, least capricious and most compassionate, most worthy of homage and yet most tolerant of derision, most publicly reviled and yet most profoundly respected” government ever created. That was 1966.
Some would scoff in derision at such a statement today. Not just the self-styled “freemen” of Montana, the poor foolish folk who insist they’re immune from laws in the “Republic of Texas,” the societal misfits who join armed militias, and that really violent psychopathic fringe that includes the Unabomber and the murderer of the 168 innocents in Oklahoma City. These are merely the most alienated, frustrated by life and needing something or someone to blame, the most readily susceptible to the virulent stream of anti-government propaganda that spews forth today.
Other, more normal Americans, too, might now question some of what I said that day. I boasted of openness and equal access to power. “Neither influence nor introduction is needed to enter these doors,” I said. “No credentials are required for an audience with any person who serves herein. The humblest human may here seek assistance under the law or petition redress with certainty that his voice, if not always heeded, will at least be heard.”
One might speak with less rhapsodic certainty today. Anyone entering that building now must pass through a metal detector. Cars may no longer park outside its entrance. Its garage requires coded identification. Similar security precautions exist at all our federal buildings, as at our airports. Fools have necessitated such inconveniences. We can live with them but it’s sad that they’re necessary.
In 1954, the year I went to Washington, people drove and strolled freely through the Capitol grounds, entered the building at will through any of its doors, walked its halls and entered its legislative galleries at leisure. The U.S. Capitol was as accessible as the local courthouse in America’s most bucolic rural county. Today, concrete and steel barriers prohibit driving a private automobile into the Capitol quadrangle. Visitors queue up to be inspected for admission at the building’s entrances.
Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Lafayette Park - America’s traditional gawking site for tourists - had to be closed to motor traffic two years ago after a series of bizarre incidents. For almost two centuries, since the War of 1812, nobody had assaulted the White House grounds with violent purpose. This changed suddenly in late 1994.
On Sept. 12, a deranged Maryland man crash-landed a stolen aircraft into a magnolia tree beside the White House. Weeks later, a Colorado Springs citizen pulled a semiautomatic assault weapon from under his trench coat and emptied 29 rounds of ammunition at the White House before being subdued by bystanders. About 2 a.m. one December morning, bullets from a drive-by shooting shattered a White House window. In another incident, an armed man climbed over the back White House fence, shot a Secret Service officer and was shot in return.
Maybe the marvel is that our public institutions enjoyed the tranquility of commonly observed respect for so many generations. Recently, something’s changed. There have always been mentally unbalanced people, vulnerable to violent suggestion. But what makes a man hate our government enough to carry out an elaborate scheme that wantonly takes the lives of 168 innocent people while injuring 500 others? What poison has corrupted his mind?
Perhaps not since the Civil War have so many maladjusted folks been convinced that our very government is somehow their enemy and a rightful target of their violent rage. This, ironically, at a time of singular national prosperity. Seldom have we seen such determined efforts to undermine faith in our common society and its elected leadership. The reckless innuendoes and unfounded personal accusations of talk show hosts, tabloid journalists and assorted political practitioners hell-bent to destroy their opponents are partly to blame. The perpetrators have a financial or career stake in promoting distrust.
Americans must not acquiesce in the dissolution of the historic bonds of trust between government and governed. Without them, our system falters. No single act can revive the spirit of trust. That requires a change in general attitude. It would help if all of us consciously tempered our taste for scandal, became a bit less eager to hear the worst about public officials, and thought long on those things that make life great in this incomparable land of ours.
Staff illustration