McClatchy Newspapers – If President Barack Obama got anything indisputably right at his news conference, it was this: The American people don’t trust the federal government. . .

In the 1930s, they looked to the government for help in the Great Depression, and Franklin D. Roosevelt used that trust to drive through the New Deal program, creating Social Security and a host of government programs.

In the 1950s, they trusted Dwight Eisenhower when he wanted to build the Interstate Highway System.

In the early 1960s, they did, too, and Lyndon Johnson used it to create Medicare and to enact civil rights legislation and the rest of his Great Society agenda.

No longer, however.

From Vietnam through the Watergate scandal, the Iraq war and the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina, Americans have soured on the very thought that the government can do things well. That makes it immensely difficult to convince them – or their members of Congress – to go along with anything that even looks like a government takeover of health care. . .

In a recent survey for CBS and The New York Times, just one out five Americans said that they trusted the government to do the right thing all or most of the time, rivaling the lowest marks since the question was first asked in 1958.