I have some quibbles with how the 110th Congress has conducted itself, but I wouldn’t say that I disapprove…not in a binary approve/disapprove poll, anyway. The public feels differently.
Fueled by disappointment at the pace of change since Democrats assumed the majority on Capitol Hill, public approval of Congress has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade, according to a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll.
Just 27% of Americans now approve of the way Congress is doing its job, the poll found, down from 36% in January, when Democrats assumed control of the House and the Senate.
There’s no evidence that the public is more displeased with the Democrats than the Republicans, so this poll just reflects a general ‘pox on both your houses’ attitude. Now, political consultants will explain that this public attitude is explained by Congress’s inability to do anything, to work across party lines and solve the big problems…I don’t think so.
I attribute it to three things.
First, Iraq. The public wants some light at the end of the tunnel on Iraq. Congress has given them no light. None. This is the single biggest failure of Congress so far. If the public were interested in bipartisanship then they would be disproportionately blaming the Republicans for the lack of illumination. The public doesn’t pay close enough attention to get bogged down on which party is more to blame. They just know that Congress (both parties) gave Bush more money to fight the war with no strings attached and no hope for the future. That drives their disapproval. If the Dems had been seen kicking and screaming and insisting on light at the end of the tunnel, then the public would have seen the problem as one of Congress vs. the President, and they would have seen Congress as the hero and the President as the villain.
Second, the immigration bill. No one liked it. Maybe that is the nature of tackling such a controversial issue. The only available compromises are unacceptable to everyone that actually cares about the issue. But, regardless, the public hated the bill and wanted to strangle anyone that supported it. For the very few people that actually liked the bill…well…it didn’t pass…so…what’s to like?
Third, George W. Bush is still our President. Believe it or not, the public realizes that the biggest of the big problems that our nation faces is a matter of leadership. Our leader is an incompetent, lying, crook. It would be extremely non-bipartisan to actuallly do anything about Bush being a lying, incompetent, crook, but the public would appreciate the effort, nonetheless.
In summation, the public is not mad that Congress isn’t tackling our big problems by working together and passing bills. They’re mad that Congress worked together to pass a stringless war appropriation, that Congress tried to work together to pass a crappy immigration bill, and that the Democrats haven’t stood up to the President and forced more of a showdown on a wide front of issues…including removing him from office.
Sounds to me like the public wants a MORE partisan approach and less namby-pamby working across party lines. Or…if they want bipartisanship, they want it from Republicans who work with Dems to end the war and end this presidency.
Poll results such as these likely indicate why frustrated voters often vote to oust the incumbents, no matter who the challengers are. It would also indicate that more officials are vulnerable than might be suspected.
“Third, George W. Bush is still our President. Believe it or not, the public realizes that the biggest of the big problems that our nation faces is a matter of leadership. Our leader is an incompetent, lying, crook.”
You hit the nail on the head. Or at least one of the nails: the companion nail is that Congress is not showing leadership either. If anything, the leadership is going out of its way to avoid leadership, or the perception thereof. It’s still the same old game of “we can’t do it because the republicans won’t let us”, and it’s getting as stale as David Broder’s penis and about as useful.
By the way, it was hilarious that the GOP filibustered the immigration bill. How’s Harry Reid and his “Gang of Fourteen Geldings” feel now that they spent the better part of the last two (three?) years voluntarily agreeing not to use one of the few tools the minority has to derail legislation, when at the very first chance they get, the GOP they bowed down to uses that very same tool.
Punks. Punks and pussies.
This shocked me: International Herald-Tribune
I can’t remember ever hearing a president refer to ours as “my government” rather than to “my administration.”
I hate every part of our government (including the fourth estate) that belongs to bush. He’s correct though about the process which we have watched since Reagan.
As in every story, there ain’t no satisfaction without action, right? I’m looking for those numbers to keep on dropping.
I noticed the use of “my government” too, and was surprised. In fact, since the first time I saw the quotation was on the BBC’s website, I wondered if the reporter hadn’t inadvertently switched Brit-speak for Yankee-speak (implausible, I know, but I was looking for an explanation). Then I actually heard the line on the radio, which dispatched that speculation.
Perhaps it was because he was speaking to a European audience, but since when has Bush tailored his speech to any audience other than one made up of carefully selected Republican supporters?
Strange, and disturbingly reminiscent of DeLay’s “I am the government!”
Well I’ll tell you what I think.
I use to be a rooting tooting dem, then I became a lesser of two evils dem, but as the scales have fallen from my eyes I have become a Burn Washingon to the Ground and Start Over non partisan American.
Speaking for myself I am no longer willing to tolerate being thrown a few bones from my own taxpayer table while the parties and their special interest feast on American blood, sweat and money.
The public is in full disapproval mode because they understand the majority of both parties do not represent the actual interest of America or the people first and foremost. That is the simple truth.
We keep putting bandaides on that big fat festering cancer of the self, political and special interest system of both parties in the DC incest tank and expect it to cure itself.
We can vote ourselves silly on the two party see-saw. Thirty pieces of silver spent in the congressional shopping bazzare will trump your vote every time.
Yes, I too think a small nuclear device in DC would be a good thing.
Me of little faith doesn’t believe beltway Democrats want anything more from us than an ATM machine and GOTV. Dems didn’t support Lamont. Dems are still letting Lieberman keep his committee. Dems caved on the war. Pelosi says impeachment is off the table. Rangel is negotiating secret trade deals. Kennedy is pushing guest workers and increases in H-1B. Obey is screaming at war moms and pushing increases in abstinence only programs. Hillary is hiring union busting consultants and taking money from Rupert Murdoch. Is that enough reason yet to think we’re getting conned? I have no intentions of donating a dime; and if Nader doesn’t run, I’ll probably write him in I’m so fed up with Democrats. Fool me for twenty years and eventually even I can catch on.
is much different than the self-congratulatory pats on the back you see and hear at Democratic party committee meetings from the senate district to the state central committee.
There’s a sense that the dems are reverting to business as usual and a sense that they have no idea what to do or what direction to go in.
Real or imagined that’s the sense in the swinging burbs.
Booman, I think you’ve gauged the public mood very well. What I don’t understand is your having a more positive opinion of this Congress than the public does.
How can you approve of a Congress that enables an unelected, criminal administration and allows an illegal occupation to go on?
Because the leaders of Congress did what they could do given the make up of their own caucuses and the narrow majority in the Senate.
I’m not happy with the result, but I have a, on balance, favorable opinion of the job Reid and Pelosi have been doing.
I also have very low expectations.
I think you trust those people too much.
You and I have had exchanges before about the Democrats, namely, whether progressives should abandon the Party. You argued that a third party is a non-starter, so that progressives must recapture the Dem Party seat by seat. I think that is a good strategy, so I have no major disagreement with you on substance.
But I really do think that Reid and Pelosi are playing us, but you don’t want to come to that conclusion. Their game became about as transparent as it can get with their caving in on the war supplemental bill, and trying to blame the whole thing on the Republicans. That is their game: on balance, they want the same thing that the Republicans want, not what we want. But they pretend that they are on our side, and it’s simply because they “don’t have the votes” or whatever that they can’t give us what we want.
I don’t know what significance this appraisal of the Dem leadership has for the strategy progressives should follow, but I think that having a correct understanding of our leaders’ motivations and values is valuable for its own sake.
Damn it Alex, you’ve gone and done it now! You’ve tweaked my cynical nerve. I was hoping to keep my cynicism suppressed.
I hope you’re wrong, Alex, but it never hurts to keep a skeptics view on peoples motivations, especially when it comes to the holding of power. To my eyes, the vote on the supplemental had the appearance of being too quick a capitulation to a severely weakened President and that strikes me as quite odd. The Dems seemed so eager to go ahead kick the can down the road to that “magic September” review which is supposed to be the line in the sand. And surprise of surprises, the line started being rubbed out, redrawn and redefined virtually before the ink was dry on the bill. As if we didn’t know that was exactly what would happen. Gives one the impression that it was purely a craven political calculus on the part of the Democrats.
And soldiers continue to die with no end in sight.
it’s more complicated than that. The Dems tried to drive a wedge between the President and vulnerable Republicans. They spent a couple months in the effort, but they failed.
It was only at that point that they started with the blame game and trying to fake us all out about a total cave-in.
But the cave-in was dictated by people from the Armed Services committees. It wasn’t the plan all along.
I think you are right. You follow these things more closely than I do.
I think that the way to maintain a proper perspective here is to realize that it is a universal quality of people in governments that everything revolves around getting and maintaining power. Thus, when we expect and demand that Democrats “do the right thing”, we completely misunderstand the nature of politics and power.
The only time any government anywhere will act in the general interest as opposed to the interest of elites is either when there is enormous public pressure for it to do so, or if there is the perception of an impending breakdown in the system.
Ok, the Frank Zappa quote just about sums up this entire thread!
I think the public, in a definite Howard Beale sort of way, is “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore”. In a large part of this country, people are not allowing things to be defined as a Republican problem or a Democratic problem, they are everyone’s problems. And front and center, as you indicate, is the war in Iraq. The Democrats, in what can only seem an effort focused on the potential political gains to be reaped in ’08, do not seem to take seriously the anger and frustration the people have for those who led them down this nightmarish road in the Middle East.
Real or not, there is a definite perception that the Democrats are not being forceful enough in taking on this administration and its policies. The beltway mentality and thinking that seems to be so prevalent throughout a large segment of the Congressional Democrats is mind boggling when viewed from here the heartland. It gives the appearance that they are cowering in fear that they might piss off the President or the Republicans and set in motion the might right-wing wurlitzer which will generate round the clock ridicule and scorn. But what they fail to realize, and I made this point to my representatives at the time of the vote on the Iraq supplemental, is that this is going to happen no matter what they do. There is never going to be a “politically right” time to take the offensive on this administration. They just have to do it because it is the right thing to do and it is why the American people voted them in in 2006.
I know they don’t have the votes right now to do everything that needs to be done. I know we still have an arrogant, ignorant, stubborn man in the Oval Office. But by some their actions (or inactions), the Democrats are giving the impression that this President still has a level of support among the populace that he just doesn’t have.
Action, without any thought and just for the sake of acting, is not what the people expect out of the Democrats. They want a principled stand for the things in which they believe. Hell, didn’t they learn anything from the ass-wiping they have gotten over the last fourteen years from the Republicans? You don’t win by playing defense. When you play defense, the best you can hope for at the end of the day is a scoreless tie. And that happens only if you play a perfect game.
Is that the highest aspiration that the Congressional Democrats have? A scoreless tie with this President? The American people have overwhelmingly made their case for change and if this is what we can expect for the balance of this term going into 2008, then the Dems can look forward to another old fashioned ass-whipping when that time comes.
From one Democrat to another, this masochistic bent exhibited by the Democratic leadership has just about pushed me to that “Howard Beale moment”. In fact, I’m about ready to throw open the window right now, stick my head out and give that shout.
If you look at what is going on, what is there to like? But seriously, I think folks slam Congress while supporting their representative. This is very much like knocking public schools, but not the neighborhood elementary school down the block.
First-Pelosi hasn’t played us yet. Her problem is not enough of her colleagues have the courage to follow her. Maybe it’s a macho thing
Second-and here Pelosi may fail us. Cheney purportedly destroyed the visitor log for the Vice-Presidential mansion. The logs were in place pursuant to federal law. The same law makes the logs the property of the U.S. The law also provides for disposal of the records, a decision for the archivist or Congress, not the vice-president. The purpose of the law is to provide transparency by tracking what our leaders do.
The real problem is that the law doesn’t matter any more. We say we are a government of law, not of men, and then suffer men who do as they please. If Cheney destroyed those logs he should be impeached. If Congress doesn’t impeach him, it will watch its already weakened authority diminish to nothing. Then we will all be in for it.