Having trust in one's government

Presidential leadership affects not only the War on Terrorism or the domestic economy — it also affects the dreams, goals and real world plans of Princeton seniors.

When people trust government, they want to be part of it. Trust in government engenders public service. After the Vietnam War and Watergate, the presidency — and by extension, government — lost the people's trust. President Reagan and George Bush worsened things by confessing that they themselves did not trust government. And the result was that participation in public life sank to new lows. At first, President Clinton restored trust, creating AmeriCorps to reinvigorate American life with the spirit of public service. But Clinton, too, ultimately let us down in this regard.

And now, the Bush administration, which pledged to end eight years of alleged public deception and restore "integrity" to the presidency, has discredited its claims to honest government and is losing the public's trust. Vice President Cheney's self-serving legal battles with the General Accounting Office to prohibit the release of Energy Task Force documents in order to protect his own interest at the expense of the public interest and President Bush's unsubstantiated rationale for war against Iraq have cloaked the administration in a shroud of suspicion.

"Politics, in short, has become one of our . . . most abused . . . professions. It ranks low on the occupational list of a large share of the population; and its chief practitioners are rarely well or favorably known. No education is considered necessary for political success, except how to find your way around a smoke-filled room." These words were spoken almost 45 years ago, by then-Senator John F. Kennedy, whose presidency would do more to inspire public service than any other presidency in modern history.

Speaking to a group of Dickinson College students in 1958, Senator Kennedy said, "Too many of our talented young men and women have no interest in a political career . . . I would urge each of you — regardless of your chosen occupation, consider entering the field of politics at some stage in your career — that you offer to the political arena, and to the critical problems of our society which are decided therein, the benefit of the talents which society has helped to develop in you . . . The question now is whether you are to give to the world in which you were reared and educated the broadest possible benefits of that education."

Through his words and actions, Kennedy told Americans that they had a responsibility to participate in public life. The possibilities and dangers of public life — from abolishing all forms of human poverty to abolishing all forms of human life — demand the participation of all, he said. When John Kennedy gave his famous call to service in his inaugural address, the world was at the height of the Cold War. Today, the challenges to our way of life — challenges whose origins lie at home, as well as abroad — are no less real, and the demands for our participation in public life no less compelling.

But perhaps more fitting than the words of the Harvard graduate Kennedy, are the words of a Princeton President, Woodrow Wilson. "A university," he said, "should be an organ of memory for the state for the transmission of its best traditions. Every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation, as well as a man of his time."

As we students consider how to spend the next few years of our lives, some of us may distrust government as much as those Dickinson College seniors listening to Senator Kennedy in 1958. But just as they did, let us listen hard to his words, and let us remember that the privileges of education and opportunity that we received at Princeton have not come without responsibility — the responsibility to participate, in our own different ways, in the process of democratic government and in preserving the freedoms of democratic society. In all our lives, our talents and values have never been more urgently needed. Adam Frankel is a Wilson School major from New York, NY. He can be reached at afrankel@princeton.edu.