… this week’s cover proclaims: “Big Government: It’s back ? no matter who wins. Americans want Uncle Sam to solve their problems.”

Yet the last page of the story has a chart showing the Gallup Poll answers to the question: “In your opinion, which of the following will be the biggest threat to the country in the future ? big business, big labor, or big government?”

The graph doesn’t include exact numbers, but the trends are clear: Americans have considered “big government” the largest threat among the three options consistently since at least 1965. And the percentage of people answering “big government” grew from about 33 percent (I’m guessing based on the unnumbered chart) in 1965 to more than 60 percent today.

The article also ends with this passage:

Then there’s the American public. The free-market policies of the past
25 years were preceded by a huge decline in American trust in
government. But there’s little sign that a decade of corporate blunders
and scandals?from Enron to Citigroup?or even political fiascoes like
Katrina has created a renewed enthusiasm for government. It’s more like
a pox on both their houses. Indeed, as public-opinion analyst Karlyn
Bowman notes, times of economic trouble generally make people less
favorably disposed toward government. And even [Yale University political scientist Jacob] Hacker, a fellow itching
for more activism, concedes there is little public support for radical
change. “You have to establish public trust by doing relatively small
things and then working from there,” he says. Big government? Small
government? Maybe all Americans really want is a bit of effective
government.

That information (as full of unattributed opinion as it is) seems inconsistent with the thesis presented on the magazine cover.