Gallup finds that Congress has officially lapped chlamydia in the unpopularity department:
The current 7% of Americans who place confidence in Congress is the lowest of the 17 institutions Gallup measured this year, and is the lowest Gallup has ever found for any of these institutions. The dearth of public confidence in their elected leaders on Capitol Hill is yet another sign of the challenges that could face incumbents in 2014’s midterm elections — as well as more broadly a challenge to the broad underpinnings of the nation’s representative democratic system.
It’s in this context that the Republicans will choose a new House Majority Leader and House Majority Whip today. And it’s in this context that the orange man will seek another term as Speaker of the House.
You would think that more incumbents would be at risk, and Eric Cantor’s surprise defeat last week is a reminder that members may be more imperiled than they appear to be. Still, the public’s lack of faith in Congress, while well-earned, is advantageous to anti-government ideologies. The Republicans make sure that government doesn’t work well and then run on the fact that government doesn’t work well. It’s really the ideology of a permanent minority party that should only gain power sporadically and for a short time whenever the majority party screws up.
That’s how things were in this country for most of the 20th-Century, and we need to get back to that. An anti-government party will never govern well, and it’s only justified purpose is to hold the governing party accountable from time to time and introduce some needed reforms.
Notably, Congress was most popular in the 1970’s when the Watergate travesty introduced a new breed of reformist Democrats who cleaned their own house and held the executive branch to account.