another lame Sodrel line: "trust and verify"

He uses it to try to fend off those who point to distasteful aspects of his voting record.

How about distrust and verify, especially when it comes to government?!

Here's Dwight Lee, running with that idea in The Freeman...

Perhaps the most positive legacy of the Clinton administration will be that it further eroded the public’s trust in the federal government. Trust has declined significantly since the Great Society programs of the Johnson administration. According to University of Michigan surveys, the number of people who responded that the federal government does what is right “always” or “most of the time” has dropped from 75 percent in 1964 to less than 30 percent in the mid-1990s.

Our view is that this decline in trust is a good thing because it mirrors rather accurately the performance of a government that has become less trustworthy....

Unfortunately, a widespread belief that discretionary government power can and should solve every social problem is incompatible with government’s performing well. Such trust leads to politically compelling demands for government to do lots of things it has no business doing, with the result that it does poorly the few things it should be doing.

The best way to make government more trustworthy is for voters to resist the temptation to achieve a cheap sense of virtue by voting for every “virtuous” proposal that comes along. The real virtue is in voting against most government programs (and the politicians who support them), no matter how virtuous those programs are supposed to be.

We need plenty of public skepticism toward government to counter the voters’ tendency to support government activities that purport to “do good” with power that will invariably be captured and corrupted by special interests. A trustworthy government requires a healthy measure of public distrust.