When It Comes to Trust, Orange County’s a Loss Leader

We’re only midway through the ‘90s and, according to various chroniclers, this is the decade in which Americans already have lost their senses of shame, decency, civility, compassion, self-effacing humor, hero-worship, personal responsibility, loyalty, honesty, charity and purpose.

According to my records, that leaves us with only thrift and perseverance as traits worth having.

Has there ever been a decade in which so many virtues fell by the wayside? Let’s hope we’ve bottomed out; otherwise, at the current rate of attrition, the millennium will be greeted by 260 million cretinous nincompoops with all the moral bearing of the age when dinosaurs ruled the Earth.

Sadly, though, another lost virtue must be added to the list: trust.

This is a tough one to lose, because it’s tied closely to innocence, which, as you know, was lost in the ‘60s.

Anyway, there’s no point in acting like we haven’t lost our sense of trust, too. Nobody answers the doorbell after 6 p.m., helps stranded motorists or pays without getting a receipt. There’s a reason we live behind walls and gates and don’t know our next-door neighbors.

The loss of trust isn’t such shocking news locally, because Orange County has been ahead of the curve on this one for quite some time. For years, U.S. attorneys called us the fraud capital of the country, and that was before the county went bankrupt and before various private investors and municipal officials were charged in swindles.

When it comes to defrocking people of trust, nobody does it better than Orange County. Or, it seems, more often.

For that reason, Orange Countians probably weren’t shocked when they read this week that a tight-knit group of Newport Beach friends feel that another of their friends has betrayed them by losing their money in the maze of high finance. Been there, done that.

But in reading the account, it was clear their pain went beyond money. The loss of trust cost them something in their souls, too.

That’s where politicians hurt us the most. Gov. Pete Wilson didn’t help the trust quotient by saying in 1994 that he wouldn’t run for president if elected governor. He broke that trust with the voters pretty quickly, although reports from Sacramento indicate he anguished for 10 to 12 minutes over the decision.

He was rewarded for breaking his trust by finishing behind President Clinton in presidential polling in California. That is the same President Clinton who told Arkansans he wouldn’t run for president if elected governor in 1990.

Even with all those signs of loss of trust, we might have been able to delude ourselves had it not been for one previously unknown congresswoman from Utah: Enid Greene Waldholtz.

No one has more eloquently memorialized the loss of trust than Waldholtz, merely another new House member elected in 1994 until her husband left her last month and subsequently was accused of both public and family frauds.

At that point, she became an oracle.

In a press conference last week of “Gone With the Wind” length, Enid Waldholtz despaired over the betrayal, saying she had been tricked by her husband both in personal and business matters.

“I loved Joe Waldholtz and trusted him with all my heart,” she said. “I know now, from the experience of the last four weeks, the person I loved and trusted never existed.”

She didn’t stop there. “Everything I thought I knew about Joe Waldholtz was a lie. I’m sorry most of all that I trusted and believed in a husband who hurt so many people.”

If that’s all she had said, it might have stayed in the family and not had national impact. But no, Waldholtz felt the need to tap into something deeper in the American soul when she challenged her TV-watching audience:

“I just ask you to do this: When you go home tonight and you’re with the person you love most in the world, and they’re holding you in their arms as you go to sleep, and tell you that they love you . . . ask yourself if they are capable of what I’ve just told you.”

Thanks a lot, Enid. No one in America has had a good night’s sleep since.

For some reason, it all reminds me of Johnny Carson, who first attracted widespread attention by hosting the TV game show, “Who Do You Trust?”

In those days, it was a laugh-a-minute TV show. Now, if they reprised the program and asked the question, the pat answer might well be: “Nobody!”

Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.