Better to be Liked than Trusted?

In a rather odd editorial in the Guardian, it is suggested that in politics, trust is an exaggerated commodity. The author suggests,

But this trust is anyway a worthless commodity. Its manifest lack didn't wreck Lloyd George or SuperMac or the wizard called Wilson. Nobody gave it to Bill Clinton (though he was more poll popular when he left office than Ronald Reagan). Nobody in full sentience would dream of trusting Charlie Kennedy to tell the same story in Aberdeen and Penzance - or Michael Howard to explain why he sacked the head of the prison service. Too much ado about synthetic sincerity.

I recall in GW's election campaign, how campaign analysts were gushing over his nonsense line to the voters, "I trust you". Voters, they declared, were too cynical to trust a politician who said "trust me", but GW's pretense that he trusted the voters supposedly inspired us to trust him despite our cynicism. Since that time, of course, he's run one of the least trusting, most closed and most secretive administrations in U.S. history.

So is the lesson here that it is better to be liked than trusted in politics? We'll support politicians whom we don't trust, as long as we like them? "Al Gore, I'd trust to manage my retirement account, but I would rather guzzle beer with Clinton or GW." Or is it that we compartmentalize our trust - we didn't trust Clinton to tell us the time of day, but we trusted that he was nonetheless working for the betterment of the nation. That's a different sort of trust, after all, than a consistent expectation of the unvarnished truth, or the expectation of candor regarding extramarital exploits.