Way back in Ronald Reagan’s day — when he was making speeches as a Democrat and long before he changed parties — he entertained audiences by offering what he called the scariest sentence in the English language: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

Americans love their country. They don’t love their government. Americans have what seems to be an inherent distrust of the political class and bureaucracies.

While these traits might have been inherited from the founders or inherent in what students are told about how freedom and self-rule work, it’s more likely that Americans learned through their own experience.

Witness the U.S. Census, now under way, a necessary process with which people should willingly comply.

Most households in this area got their forms last week. They knew they were coming because the U.S. Census Bureau sent each household a letter informing us to expect the form. Now everyone knows that the government won’t be sending out letters the week before April 15 reminding us our tax returns will be due. Does the IRS have a higher estimation of our intellect?

Further, we were told on the form to complete it and mail it back immediately. Yet each question was predicated with “as of April 1, 2010.” That’s still 11 days from now. What were expectant mothers with due dates to do? What about people who were moving? And what about any visits from the Grim Reaper? While any such developments during a two-week period might be minuscule compared to the census overall, Uncle Sam usually requires exacting precision from us, especially on the aforementioned tax returns. Why would census gurus command Americans to speculate about the future?

Of course, as federal correspondence, the letter and the form contained required information on the federal Paperwork Reduction Act and where we could send our thoughts on compliance. Ours would be, why would you send two mailings to every household in the United States when one would do the job? There are about 112 million households in the United States. The extra postage cost $50 million.

For months now, the nation’s attention has been focused on whether and how to expand the federal government’s role in the arena of health care. We’ve said it before and will say it again: Health care reform is inevitable because the present government payment systems, Medicare and Medicaid, are unsustainable. But a large majority of Americans are not “on board” and not only because they have little idea what’s in the package. They simply don’t trust the government to be capable of managing health care in anything approaching an efficient and cost-effective manner.

Immigration has been out of control for years, Medicaid is beset by fraud, stimulus spending fiasco stories are rivaling Katrina relief fiasco stories, meeting the medical needs of veterans is pledged but not delivered … on and on. It would be great to trust government to solve all problems, but skepticism is solidly grounded in what we witness every day.

If something as straightforward as a national headcount reeks of dysfunction, then Americans can’t be faulted. Trust is an earned commodity based on making and keeping promises. There’s no shortage of what Americans have been promised. There’s a great gap in what has been delivered.