Phil Singer is the Founder & CEO of Marathon Strategies, a communications and investigative research firm.
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Trust in the institutions that have defined America since its inception is at a nadir, prompting a stream of punditry about how our democracy is going up in smoke. But instead of working together to restore the public’s faith in the American experiment, our leaders continue the political blood feuds that have led to this erosion in institutional confidence.
With the U.S. now seemingly caught in a battle between democracy and autocracy, trust in these institutions—whether that is the three branches of our government, the military or even our electoral system as a whole—must be restored. For too long, the flag, the national anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance and even our history have become proxies for advancing divisive agendas at the expense of the institutions these symbols represent.
To reclaim these institutions and ideas, Americans need to remember the common narrative that calls on our collective history and the promise of a more united future. The first step is understanding the scope of the problem. In this case, the situation is grim.
A Pew study from 2021 found that about one-quarter of Americans trust Washington. Moreover, as Democrats and Republicans fail to make progress on issues ranging from inflation to supply chain woes to the myriad foreign threats we face, Congress’s approval sits at a paltry 19%. Even the military, which has historically been one of our most respected institutions, saw Americans’ trust in it fall to 56%—down from 70% in 2018.
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What these numbers show is that America’s shared sense of mission—shown so clearly during the Second World War, the Moon landing, and in those dark days after 9/11—has devolved into fierce tribalism and mistrust. America’s brand has splintered into sparring factions: Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative and so many other dividing lines. This, in turn, has led to widespread distrust in government institutions and a war of attrition among lawmakers.
George Washington issued a solemn warning against sectionalism in his farewell address, saying that “…cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterward the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” More than 200 years later, Washington’s words are proving ominously true.
On the right, Donald Trump has created a cult of personality around his gilded version of populism masquerading as patriotism. By appealing to the so-called “missing white voters” and scapegoating everyone from immigrants to progressive lawmakers to the media, Trump played on these voters’ anxieties while adhering to his adviser Roger Stone’s ugly adage that “Politics is not about uniting people. It’s about dividing people. And getting your fifty-one percent.”
The former president, however, isn’t alone in employing these tactics to sow mistrust in our nation’s institutions. Many progressive lawmakers continually cast doubt on America’s story. Instead of a shining example of democracy, The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos writes that many young progressives see U.S. institutions as part of “a system that had failed to stem inequality, climate change, oligarchy, and political capture.”
While there is certainly some truth in this worldview, the tactics have done little more than creating a scorched-earth mentality that eschews any form of bipartisanship.
From my more than two decades working in both politics and communications, I can say with certainty that restoring faith in anything—let alone the U.S. government—is not an easy undertaking. We cannot rebrand America like we do a company, nor can we coerce Americans into some form of feigned unity. We can, however, apply certain strategies from a traditional branding campaign to shift the tide of contempt toward our nation’s institutions.
First, we need an overarching messaging framework, and it must start with President Biden. Biden ran on the promise of healing a divided nation but has quickly discovered that talking about uniting Americans and doing it is very different. Biden needs to get both sides to admit the current situation is untenable and that the health of our democracy depends on Democrats and Republicans remembering they’re on the same team. One way to do this would be to mimic StoryCorps’ “One Small Step” Initiative, which has people with divergent beliefs talk and discover that they have more in common than they thought.
Second, voices from across the political spectrum must drive this effort lest it risks being seen as a stunt or guise. While this may seem difficult in our highly fractured political environment, there are still enough influential voices who could serve as credible messengers.
Third, this message needs to be driven home across all media platforms by leaders from all sides of the political divide. One tactic that could be imitated is doing something along the lines of the documentary The Words That Built America, which had elected officials and others reading the Constitution, or ABC’s Schoolhouse Rock!
All of this, however, is contingent on our leaders eschewing brazen partisanship “to form a more perfect union.” The last 30 years of base-driven campaigning and gerrymandering have created a dynamic in which elected officials are focused almost exclusively on winning primaries instead of general elections. As a result, primary voters that often comprise the fringe of the fringe set an agenda that does not reflect the rest of the country’s views, creating wariness about Washington, which inevitably results in eroding institutional confidence.
The magnitude of this crisis cannot be overstated. As the January 6th insurrection painfully laid bare, the breakdown of trust in our government’s institutions poses an existential threat. These institutions are the bedrock of our democracy as envisioned by the Founding Fathers and for over two centuries have served as a lingua franca for how we function as a society. Yes, there have been mistakes, but to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, these are living institutions that must evolve with the times but at their core remain true to preserving the Republic.
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Author: Phil Singer, Forbes Councils Member
