At 250, America wants what it has always wanted, a government that delivers
As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of its declaration of independence, it is worth remembering what that document was about: not a flag or a border, but an argument about government — that it should answer to and deliver for the people it serves.
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Two and a half centuries later, Americans are making that same demand again. Regardless of the people and parties they elect, Americans are asking for results.
Nowhere is that clearer than in how Americans feel about their country’s role in the world. A year ago, the Trump administration dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which had for six decades helped feed the hungry, cure the sick, build economies and more abroad. The justification offered for ending USAID and sharply curtailing US foreign aid was that aid was a “criminal” enterprise, but the implicit argument was that ordinary Americans had simply lost interest in it.
New evidence says otherwise. A survey of more than 2,000 American voters by Echelon Insights and the Rockefeller Foundation found that a majority of Americans remain favourable towards foreign aid. Describe the actual work — responding to famines, stopping disease outbreaks, helping after a disaster — and support climbs to nine in ten. But it’s also clear that Americans never objected to generosity; they get frustrated by a lack of results.
I spent years working in Washington and writing a book about America’s foreign policy (mis)adventures. What is clear from that history is that the U.S. government’s most dangerous habit is not some grand conspiracy, it’s failure to deliver credible results: despite all the government’s investment and effort, Americans do not feel the world was getting safer or more stable.
This is not just an American story, as we’ve seen with waves of incumbents being voted out in elections around the world. A different Foundation study last autumn of 34 countries found similar instincts almost everywhere. In the UK a majority still want their country to work with others to meet shared challenges, and even among the most skeptical voters there is no clear appetite to retreat from the world. Support for engagement increases when cooperation is shown to work. From Washington to Westminster to capitals on every continent, the public wants their governments to make the world safer.
Even if the feeling is global, the American public’s perspective matters. The United States remains an economic, military, political and informational superpower — and its decisions carry outsized weight. Whether the world it becomes more stable and prosperous, whether it makes AI work for people’s well-being, whether it can meet a changing climate, will depend in part on what the American people want to do, but just as importantly on whether the public servants who answer to them can deliver meaningful results. The generosity exists. The execution is the question.
As America’s 250th celebration reminds us, this is not a new demand, and it is a solvable one. Yes, the world has changed a great deal since 1776, and we face rapidly changing technology, planetary threats, and a changing global power balance.
Still, Washington and other governments need to learn, again, to do the job well enough to earn the trust their people are still willing to give.
Don’t doubt the generosity of the public. Deliver on it.
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John Gans is a former chief speechwriter at the Pentagon, the author of White House Warriors, and a senior vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation.