CHRIS MATTHEWS: Back in 1964, we looked it up, a Pew study, 76% of the American people believed that most of the time, almost always, the federal government did the right thing. Now it's down to less than 20%. The trust question. The commitments you made before the rollout with health care. What is it? What is it? It's a serial decline, Mr. President. It keeps going down. We had Watergate, we had the Vietnam War, of course, all that together. But what's going to stop it, arrest that decline of faith of you doing the right thing, you being honest, anybody who's president, there's skepticism that's out there.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, look, the cynicism and skepticism is deep. And I distinguish between, you know, just management of government and the basic blocking and tackling of getting stuff done to help the American people. And then the ability move big policy changes that are going to help more Americans.

When it comes to the management of government, part of the reason people are so skeptical is that when we do things right, they don't get a lot of attention. If we do something that is perceived at least initially as a screwup, it will be on the nightly news for a week.