“Mod­ern diplo­mats approach every prob­lem with an open mouth.” — Arthur J. Gold­berg, for­mer Labor Sec­re­tary, Supreme Court Jus­tice, and UN Ambassador

If Gold­berg is right, then there is no more mod­ern a diplo­mat than our chat­ty Sec­re­tary of State, John Ker­ry. Ker­ry last week mused aloud on the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion dur­ing his inter­view with for­mer net­work news­read­er Tom Brokaw. “To this day,” Ker­ry said, “I have seri­ous doubts that Lee Har­vey Oswald act­ed alone.”

Hav­ing said enough, Ker­ry pro­ceed­ed to say more. “I cer­tain­ly have doubts that he was moti­vat­ed by him­self, I mean I’m not sure if any­body else was involved — I don’t go down that road with respect to the Grassy Knoll the­o­ry and all that — but I have seri­ous ques­tions about whether they got to the bot­tom of Lee Har­vey Oswald’s time and influ­ence from Cuba and Rus­sia,” the Sec­re­tary of State opined, omi­nous­ly hint­ing that the gov­ern­ments of two coun­tries with whom we are pre­sum­ably try­ing to improve rela­tions may be behind one of the twen­ti­eth century’s most hor­rif­ic acts.

“I think he [Oswald] was inspired some­where by some­thing, and I don’t know what or if or any — I can’t pin any­thing down on that,” he added unhelpfully.

Kerry’s lucid­i­ty and diplo­mat­ic acu­men aside, he is clear­ly with­in the main­stream of Amer­i­can con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists. Such is the find­ing of a new work by Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute Senior Fel­low Kar­lyn Bow­man and Research Assis­tant Andrew Rugg, an infor­ma­tive and enter­tain­ing study of pub­lic opin­ion on var­i­ous con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, rang­ing from the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion to rigged Super Bowls.

Bow­man is that rare stu­dent of pub­lic opin­ion who seems to have no axe to grind. She does not, to my knowl­edge, lend her ser­vices to polit­i­cal cam­paigns or com­mer­cial enter­pris­es. And though she is employed by a Cen­ter-Right think tank, her work seems unskewed by ide­ol­o­gy. She has an aca­d­e­m­ic bent for pre­ci­sion and under­state­ment. She is less inter­est­ed in telling you what she thinks than in under­stand­ing and ana­lyz­ing what the pub­lic thinks on a wide array of subjects.

The major­i­ty of the pub­lic thinks our Sec­re­tary of State is right to dis­be­lieve the government’s offi­cial expla­na­tion of Kennedy’s mur­der. Bow­man cites a poll tak­en in Decem­ber 1963, the month after the event, which found that 62 per­cent of the pub­lic believed that Oswald didn’t act alone. A poll con­duct­ed this past April, near­ly half a cen­tu­ry lat­er, found that 59 per­cent of Amer­i­cans main­tain that view (p. 1).

In sug­gest­ing that the Russ­ian and Cuban gov­ern­ments may have played a role, Ker­ry is in the minor­i­ty. A 2003 Gallup poll found that only 15 per­cent fault those regimes (p. 8). A 1991 CNN poll found that 48% impli­cate the Mafia, while 50% believe the CIA engi­neered the oper­a­tion (an alle­ga­tion that Ker­ry rejects), sug­gest­ing an odd col­lab­o­ra­tion between gov­ern­ment agents and the mob (p. 5).

And while it is dis­turb­ing to think that half of poll respon­dents believe that a fed­er­al agency con­spired to assas­si­nate an Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent, it is no less trou­bling to con­sid­er that an over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans has con­sis­tent­ly said that their gov­ern­ment has engaged in “an offi­cial cov­er-up to keep the pub­lic from learn­ing the truth about the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion” (p. 4). Bow­man cites six polls, tak­en over the course of 15 years by CBS, the New York Times and ABC, which posed that ques­tion. Majori­ties rang­ing from 61 to 81 per­cent believe that the gov­ern­ment is hid­ing the truth, a belief that cross­es par­ty lines. A 2003 Fox News poll found that 81 per­cent of Democ­rats and 69 per­cent of Repub­li­cans sub­scribe to this view.

That is per­haps not sur­pris­ing since, Bow­man notes, “when­ev­er poll­sters use the words ‘gov­ern­ment’ and ‘cov­er-up,’ a sub­stan­tial num­ber respond in the affir­ma­tive” (p. 2), a dis­qui­et­ing finding.

Bow­man also con­clud­ed that adher­ence to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries isn’t con­fined to par­tic­u­lar demo­graph­ic groups. The notion that such the­o­ries are the pre­oc­cu­pa­tion of the poor­ly-edu­cat­ed doesn’t hold up.

“Mid­dle-aged Amer­i­cans are more like­ly to believe in the JFK assas­si­na­tion con­spir­a­cy than old­er or younger ones. Young peo­ple and Democ­rats are most like­ly to sub­scribe to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about 9/11. Women are more like­ly to believe foul play was involved in Princess Diana’s death… We’re hes­i­tant to endorse what much of the lit­er­a­ture con­cludes – that the young and less edu­cat­ed are more prone to con­spir­a­to­r­i­al instincts” (p. 2).

To illus­trate her point, she cites numer­ous poll results. Among them:

• 42% believe it is some­what or very like­ly that Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt “knew in advance that the Japan­ese were going to bomb Pearl Har­bor, but he did not warn our troops because he want­ed to see the US get involved in World War II,” (Scripps Howard/Ohio U, 1997, p. 10), while 36% think it some­what or very like­ly that “peo­ple in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment either assist­ed in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they want­ed the US to go to war in the Mid­dle East” (Scripps Howard/Ohio U, 2006, p. 28).
• 88% of African Amer­i­cans and 50% of whites think the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King was not “the act of one indi­vid­ual” but “part of a larg­er con­spir­a­cy” (CNN/Essence, March 2008, p. 20).
• 31% of respon­dents (includ­ing 36% of women) think “there was foul play involved in Princess Diana’s death” and that it was not “pure­ly an acci­dent” (Fox News, 2007, p. 27).
• Near­ly one in four respon­dents doubt that Osama bin Laden is dead (CBS/60 Minutes/Vanity Fair, 2011, p. 38), 6% think Elvis may be alive (Fox News, 1997, p. 40), and 4% believe Paul McCart­ney was killed in a car wreck in 1966 (Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling, 2013, p. 41).
• Only 25% of respon­dents believe a report by the US Air Force say­ing that peo­ple in New Mex­i­co who thought they saw “UFOs and the bod­ies of aliens actu­al­ly saw the remains of weath­er bal­loons and crash-test dum­mies that were part of top-secret US mil­i­tary exper­i­ments.” 64% aren’t buy­ing the government’s sto­ry (Gallup, 1997, p.14).
• 12% believe that the US gov­ern­ment had John Lennon, Kurt Cobain and Tupac Shakur mur­dered because they “tried to spread a coun­ter­cul­ture mes­sage that [the gov­ern­ment] didn’t like” (Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling, 2013, p. 42).
• 32% believe that “major sport­ing events like the NBA play­offs or the Super Bowl are some­times rigged by ref­er­ees and league offices … [for] bet­ter rat­ings and more mon­ey and pub­lic­i­ty” (Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling, 2013, p. 43).

It would seem that almost every­one sub­scribes to one con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry or anoth­er and that many are inclined to think that the gov­ern­ment is engaged in cov­er-ups. Sus­pi­cion of gov­ern­ment is not con­fined to the Tea Par­ty, but rather seems unbound­ed by ide­ol­o­gy, par­ty, gen­der, race or age.

Apart from the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, which is wide­ly shared, these the­o­ries tend to exert a divi­sive force on our pol­i­tics. Peo­ple on the Left are more like­ly to believe that Pres­i­dent Bush “inten­tion­al­ly allowed the 9/11 attacks” (Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling, 2009, p. 31) and that he “delib­er­ate­ly mis­led the Amer­i­can pub­lic about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruc­tion” (CNN/ORC, 2013, pp. 33–4). Those on the Right are more like­ly to think that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was not born in this coun­try (CNN/ORC, 2011, p. 35).

These dis­parate the­o­ries, dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble to dis­prove — at least to the sat­is­fac­tion of their adher­ents — have a last­ing and cor­ro­sive effect on our pol­i­tics. Democ­ra­cies can and must accom­mo­date par­ti­san and pol­i­cy dif­fer­ences, but they require an under­ly­ing con­sen­sus, a com­mon nar­ra­tive. When dif­fer­ent groups har­bor com­pet­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about the way things real­ly work, com­pro­mise becomes more dif­fi­cult and elusive.

The con­spir­acist per­ceives a chasm between polit­i­cal dis­course and real inten­tions. Things are not what they seem and polit­i­cal lan­guage is intend­ed to dis­guise and con­ceal an unseen real­i­ty. Every­one is pre­sumed to have a hid­den agen­da. If you believe that Repub­li­cans are out to make the rich wealth­i­er and keep the poor in pover­ty, then you can’t take seri­ous­ly pro­pos­als to spur eco­nom­ic growth through tax cuts. If you think that Democ­rats aim to enlarge gov­ern­ment and strip cit­i­zens of their lib­er­ty, then a pro­pos­al to expand health insur­ance cov­er­age looks like just anoth­er gov­ern­ment pow­er grab.

That doesn’t mean that we should accept what­ev­er the gov­ern­ment or politi­cians say at face val­ue. Demo­c­ra­t­ic cit­i­zen­ship demands skep­ti­cism. But as Bow­man notes, it can be hard to deter­mine “at what point an indi­vid­ual cross­es the line from skep­tic to con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist” (p. 2).

I am not a con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist because I am a skep­tic. Three decades spent in and around gov­ern­ment con­vinced me that no indi­vid­ual or group of indi­vid­u­als is smart enough or com­pe­tent enough to orga­nize the sorts of schemes that gov­ern­ment alleged­ly perpetrates.

Con­spir­a­cies require com­pe­tence. Oba­macare is among many dai­ly reminders of gov­ern­ment incompetence.

Con­spir­a­cies also require knowl­edge. Con­sid­er all that the Pres­i­dent, a bril­liant, ded­i­cat­ed and high­ly edu­cat­ed man, did not know about the Exec­u­tive Branch of gov­ern­ment that is under his direct super­vi­sion – he did not know that the IRS was sin­gling out con­ser­v­a­tive groups for adverse treat­ment, he did not know that the NSA was mon­i­tor­ing the cell­phone of the Ger­man Chan­cel­lor and the com­mu­ni­ca­tions of dozens of heads of allied states, he did not know that the health care exchanges wouldn’t work, assur­ing audi­ences just days before their launch that enrolling in cov­er­age would be as easy as buy­ing air­line tick­ets, he did not know that our facil­i­ties in Beng­hazi were in dan­ger of attack and then mis­tak­en­ly thought that the attack result­ed from protests against a YouTube video, he did not know that mil­lions would have their health insur­ance cov­er­age can­celed after he had repeat­ed­ly promised that they could keep it (he is sor­ry about that, though).

If this is the man who is mas­ter­mind­ing gov­ern­ment metas­ta­sis, then our lib­er­ties would appear secure.

The prob­lem with gov­ern­ment is not that it per­pe­trates con­spir­a­cies, but that it sets out to do things it can­not do well, if at all. The con­spir­a­to­r­i­al bent of mind is a close cousin of the Left’s con­ceit that real­ly smart peo­ple can redesign and remake soci­ety accord­ing to their own sense of how things should work. They’re just not that smart. Or that good. Their trail of fail­ure is marked by bro­ken promis­es, botched pro­grams, and mount­ing debt.

Gov­ern­ment is dan­ger­ous because its benev­o­lent inten­tions out­run its capa­bil­i­ties.  It does dam­age when it sets out to do more than it was designed to do.  Amer­i­cans shouldn’t fear gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cies, but a gov­ern­ment that exceeds its limits.