Former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Indiana), now of the Indiana University Center on Congress:

Of all the numbers thrown at us over the course of last year, one stands out for me. I hope we can avoid repeating it this year.

That number is 12. It’s the percentage of Americans in a December Quinnipiac poll who said they trust the government in Washington to do what is right most or all of the time. It’s a depressingly small number — especially compared to the 41 percent who say they “hardly ever” trust the government. This meshes with recent polls that echo a bleak truth: trust in government is at historically low levels.

That’s not all, though. Americans are feeling vulnerable and highly distrustful of both government and private-sector prying. More worrisome, a few months ago an AP poll found that fewer than a third of Americans trust one another. The poll’s message is clear: our society is in the midst of a crisis in trust.

This might seem like a touchy-feely concern, but it’s not. Trust is essential to our political system and our way of life. The belief that people and institutions will do what they say they will do is the coin of the realm in our society. It is what allows people to work together — in their daily interactions with others and in their communities, legislatures and Congress. Negotiation, compromise, collegiality, and the mechanisms our complex and diverse society depends on are impossible without trust. Trust is one of the medley of virtues that have allowed our institutions to develop and prosper, along with honesty, competence, responsibility, and civility.

A breakdown in trust between Congress and the executive branch invariably brings problems: the turmoil of the Vietnam War era, Watergate, Iran-Contra, our current budget travails. A society-wide lack of trust imposes real costs. It makes the drafting of laws and their implementation extremely difficult: government becomes more expensive because it requires more emphasis on regulations and enforcement.

In fact, you could argue that we see all around us the results of our trust deficit. Government dysfunction, an economy performing below its potential, public officials’ scandals and misdeeds, trusted institutions’ willingness to skirt the law and standards of good conduct, our social safety net under attack because people mistrust recipients — all of these speak to a society struggling as trust weakens.

Yet here’s a question. Do the polls match your experience? In my case, they do not. Trust still figures in my dealings with institutions and individuals, most of whom are good people trying to live a decent life and to be helpful to others. They deal with one another honorably and with care. I’m convinced that this is because, no matter what the polls say at the moment, the habits instilled by parents, schools, and a vast number of public and private institutions do not just disappear.

The first thought I have is that if 12 percent of people trust the government to do the right thing, we know who the truly naïve are. Opponents of the Obama administration, for instance, distrusted Obama from the start, and have been proven right time and time again. The only thing you should trust about federal or state government is that everyone in it is in it for his or her own political power, first and foremost. Anyone who has a negative dealing with a local unit of government has no reason to trust that that unit of government will do the right thing thereafter either. (And, as you know, there are far more laws and ordinances than really need to exist, particularly those that restrict use of private property.)

This may be somewhat unfair piling-on upon Hamilton, who was one of the better Democratic Congressmen during his 34 years in the House. Hamilton went from the public sector to the public sector, and moving from Washington bubble to academic bubble he may have insufficient dealings with the real world — for instance, the struggles of people with five-, not six-digit, salaries and the lack of perks of the real world.

Consider the current New Jersey Bridgegate scandal. The most charitable reading of it is that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie hired staffers to do the right thing every day, and they didn’t. (Note that Christie merely fired the offending staffers, really for violating the commandment of not publicly embarrassing the boss, instead of having them prosecuted for misconduct in public office.) The most cynical reading is that Christie decided to stick it to a political rival because he had the power to do so, in the same way that politicians stick it to political rivals, whether or not that hurts their constituents (including those who voted for Christie), because politics is a zero-sum game.

Our country’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, are in fact based on lack of trust. If those who signed the Declaration of Independence trusted the British government at any point in their lives, that trust was surely gone (other than trust that the British would do the wrong thing) by the early summer of 1776. You don’t need separation of powers, and you certainly don’t need the Bill of Rights, if you trust the government to act wisely and make good decisions. A republic is based on lack of trust in pure popular democracy. The Constitution is full of what government cannot do to American citizens, because of lack of trust that the evils of British rule wouldn’t be repeated in the new United States.

As to Hamilton’s last point: Are most people “good people trying to live a decent life and be helpful to others”? If that were the case, we wouldn’t need laws. Trust is something you earn; most people are not automatically granted trust. In a business relationship, one side doesn’t pay, or the other side doesn’t perform, and that trust is gone. That obviously applies much more in personal relationships. The world is full of bad people and is unfair besides that.

When it comes to politics at any level, to quote Fox Mulder, trust no one.