I guess it's only a matter of time before someone here brings up the reasons why we shouldn't trust the government or something. Though there is that weird bit where we trust the government more than we trust politicians, except politicians compose the government. A bouquet of wilted flowers still smells sweet, I guess.
Eeehhh... I think much of my trust for governmental institutions comes more from the employees than the politicians, really. The ones that
aren't elected officials. So far as personal interactions go, they've always been significantly more likely to be there at least in part for some ideological reason that doesn't basically boil down to fucking one demographic or another over, nor to be there primarily for the graft/networking opportunities. And a lot of the ones that don't start that way have tended to end up pretty sympathetic and/or invested in whatever they're involved with, if they have even the least iota of ability to empathize with their fellow human being.
Ground level government work has been surprisingly effective at producing relatively decent people legitimately trying to help with whatever they're doing, basically. Not perfect or anything, by any means, but better than most organizations I've personally interacted with.
Haven't bothered to really check numbers and whatnot to see if it's an attitude that's particularly justified, but so far as your kinda' day-to-day evaluation of things go, that's around the point I'm at, at this point in my life. I trust the government more than I don't 'cause most of what
actually makes it up (state/federal workers) have been pretty alright on the net of things.
... I imagine some portion of that observed behavior is due to gov't work just not paying particularly well, comparatively, and usually making a good-ish try to take care of their workers. You get folks more inclined to be there for reasons that basically come down to being a relatively decent person, and leaning towards less concerned about exploiting things.