There's a lot more going on here than the so-called professor alludes to; I am surprised a professor missed it. Just goes to show, as Dennis Prager is want to say, "You had to have gone through grad school to think like that."

It's not that the public has an increasingly distrustful view of government (true) - the public has traditionally always had a distrustful view of government. It is the American Heritage to do so. It is why our forefathers rebelled, and it is why we have the Constitution.

What is instead happening is the public is moving back to its roots of being distrustful of government. What has happened - since around the time of Wilson, but especially during FDR's New Deal (take note, both were Leftist Democrats)  - is that as Americans gave up their heritage of self-sufficiency and started to look toward Big Government more & more for solutions, they got seduced by the delivery ability of BG. BG is destined to mess up. We are seeing it today. And belatedly realizing it..