Our Weird Ambivalence about Government

In giving the Republican response to the State of the Union address, Virginia governor Robert McDonnell kept coming back to the theme that our government is too big and does too much:

The circumstances of our time demand that we reconsider and restore the proper, limited role of government at every level. . . . Today, the federal government is simply trying to do too much.

Now this is a perfectly rational philosophy, and it gets loud cheers in some quarters. I submit, though, that very few Americans actually agree with this. Everything I have read lately says that people are upset about the economy and want the government to do something about it. How can that be reconciled with the notion that the government is too big? And consider this table, from one of many polls showing that although Americans complain about the size of the government, they want more spending on almost everything the government does:

Given that nobody really wants to shrink the government, and Republicans know this -- witness their ploy of opposing health reform by raging against proposed Medicare cuts -- there is an element of pure fraud to statements like McDonnell's.