I disagree with
Glenn a bit here. I don't think when talking about politicians "trust" isn't about about faith in someone's honesty, it's about the degree of faith you have that they'll roughly do the right thing. There are of course a lot of things which are quite difficult or even impossible to know, so ultimately one has to have a bit of faith in the idea that someone has decent judgment. I also think that if we had a better press which spent more time trying to reveal information and explain policy to people instead of focusing on character, trust, etc... the importance of trust would be diminished, but it wouldn't go away.