Rising expectations rather than falling competence drive declining trust in leaders

Evidence

Our trust or faith declines because our expectations rise and we increasingly judge our leaders incompetent. It is striking that, in retrospect, Harry Truman is seen as a paragon of competence. This is not because people have forgotten how limited he was—rather, we now know others are at least as limited but, being perhaps less self-aware than Truman, expect to be judged competent. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 745

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Hardin’s core argument that trust tracks trustworthiness plus evidence; declinists misdiagnose trust problems as attitudinal when they are evidence problems. Also echoes Rosanvallon’s counter-democracy themes.