Poll shows anti-government sentiment still strong

According to a new poll, anti-government sentiment is still fairly strong in the United States, with more than half of respondents saying they would steer their children away from a career in government. And fully a third of those polled who said they thought the country was heading in the wrong direction cite government as the primary contributor to this trend.

These and other, sentiments about federal, state and local government emerged in a survey of 1,557 people conducted in May and June by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, National Public Radio and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The poll did include some positive news about the public perception of government. In the past five years, the percentage of respondents who believe that federal government will usually solve the problems it sets out to address has risen 12 points, to 51 percent. And 39 percent of those polled said government does a better job than it is given credit for overall.

Still, the poll showed that trust in government is far from fully restored:

• Fifty-five percent of respondents said government corruption was a very important problem, with 59 percent of those who feared corruption indicating that the federal government was more corrupt than state or local governments.
• Seventy percent said they trusted the federal government to do what is right only some or none of the time.

Sixty-two percent embraced the concept that religious, charitable or community organizations are better suited to provide services to the needy than is government. Bush has been a persistent champion of such "faith-based" involvement. Similarly, the Bush message of smaller, closer government is embodied in the confidence those surveyed repeatedly display in their state and local officials, particularly when compared to their federal counterparts.

Full poll results are available at the National Public Radio Web site .