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The government has never had a monopoly on information or narrative creation, so whatever it lost, that's not it.
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His argument is that the govt had more control of a smaller media (a few networks and papers from which everyone got their news) that acted as gatekeepers and narrative creators.
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IMO, governments lost a lot of legitimacy after the 2008 financial crisis. There were no consequences for rich people who did shady things, and they got bail-outs. There were a lot of consequences for ordinary people, and no bail-outs.
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He touches on this, but not directly. His assessment is that this sort of thing (2008 bailouts) could have been gotten away with in a pre-Internet age. Post-Internet, however, the govt can't bullshit the public with some story about how the bailouts were equitable or morally defensible. The "public," as he describes the people in opposition to the govt and hierarchical institutions generally, can easily find information online to debunk such govt and industry spin, and then they can package counter-arguments which go viral. The result is a loss of control by authorities. This includes what you cite -- a loss of credibility and moral validity.
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Conservatives have given up on the idea that the government can do anything other than beat on other people (other countries, immigrants, people who disagree with the police).
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He's not a conservative. His admitted aim is to save democracy. He sees authoritarian creep and nihilism among both the masses and the "elites." He thinks the problem is that the public believes - delusionally - that it can demand and receive "fixes" for complex problems from the govt. The Trump voter thinks protectionism will bring back jobs. The progressive believes we can fix inequality and poverty other than at the margins by simply throwing money and govt intervention at them.
These things can be attempted, sure, but they will not succeed all or even a small fraction of the time. Gurri argues that govt has been lying to a credulous public about how much it can do for a long time and thus given the public unrealistic expectations of its capabilities. This creates an angry public that operates like George Steinbrenner - throwing out the Manager every four years when it doesn't get everything it wants.
Gurri thinks this is abetted by "Intellectuals Yet Idiots" (policy wonks who think in the abstract but fail in the practical and concrete) who populate a lot of govt and institutions. These people can never admit being wrong or having limitations because their brand is being right about everything (smartest guys in the room syndrome). Secondly, politicians generally can't admit being fallible because the deluded public - again, unrealistically - will not accept that. No one can tell the truth: "This is a policy we think will work, but there's a chance it will fail."
He argues that what we need most from our leaders is humility. And what we need most from the public is circumspect thinking, tolerance for failure, and maturity.
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Moderate Democrats will only act cautiously in a way calculated not to really solve any problem. None of them have any promise to really change anything. All of this is at least partly true in a lot of other industrialized countries, too.
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He writes on this problem. But if you really want to see someone attack this issue in a comprehensive manner, Michael Sandel's
The Tyranny of Merit is the book for you. Sandel asserts that merit is becoming a back door into which something like an old school English class system, aiding exclusively the upper middle to affluent classes, is infecting American society, masked as defensible and just based on arbitrary metrics, a crooked education system, and legacy hierarchies (industry and govt) in which the same people with the same badges hand each other positions.
