Why is the approval rating for Congress so low?
 

In reading another thread about holding Democrats accountable I saw a comment about the very low approval rating for Congress in the polls. The author of the comment took this to be evidence of the public's dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party's performance. Is it really?

I think not. And I think it is worthy of a thread of its own.

If a pollster asked me about Congress I, too, would say that I disapprove of its performance. But I blame the Republicans for that. They are using the filibuster to block bills in the Senate at something like three times the all time record pace.

It is just not true that the Democrats control Congress. They do control the House, and get bills passed there all the time. But the Senate is 50-49 Republican controlled (not 51-49 Dem). I say that because Joe Lieberman is a Republican for all practical purposes and Tim Johnson has been incapacitated for the entire term. No wonder they can't stop the war or do much of anything to undo the damage caused by conservative rule

So who is more to blame for the poor performance of the current Congress: The Democratic Party or the Republican Party?

Well the obvious answer is that there really is no difference between the two.

If you want to speak specifics, the Dems are too blame.

My biggest problem in politics wouldn't be that they are opposed to me (btw I am not towing a republican line)... my problem is as inept as repubes are, the dems won't stand against them.

If they won the elections by referendum on their opposition to the war, why don't they legitimately stand up to it?

The obvious answer is politics. It is no secret the tilted left here stands against the war... if the dems won the election based on that referendum, then fucking stand against it. Don't fund it. Do you part, vote your beliefs. If you don't want the troops, push legislation that will get them out... obviously the President will veto, or it might get filibustered.

But if you are claiming to stand for a stance then vote for it, I would respect them far far more. I can't respect the dems because they play into the shitty repube-lican politics. There should be a limit on congressional seating so we don't have life time politicians.

They say they do support the troops, they want them home; fair enough I won't argue that they don't, but to not vote legislation that does is really false.

The democrats did not win because the nation was 'anti-war'. The anti-war people were not a swing vote in 2006.

The democrats know this, and if they try to go that direction for real, they would lose support.

They won because it was perceived republicans were not doing a good job more than any of their own platforms.

Now they need to please the leftists, but keep the centrists happy too.

Congress always polls lower than a president.

Voters are expressing opinions on a two-party body where you generally would expect both approval (meeting expectations) and disapproval (not doing enough) by voters of the party in power and disapproval by voters of the opposing party.

It really makes Congressional polls meaningless until you dig deeper for approval ratings of Congress by party in polls of all voters. If you look at those polls, Democrats rate higher than Republicans in every recent poll.

UStwo...thats the first I've heard that the anti-war people were not a swing vote. It was a key factor (opposition to the Bush war policy), among other factors, with most Independents.

I think people in general have disliked the government for a few years, doesn't matter who's in control.

The biggest reasons are the economy is shit. Some on here can argue but....the US Dollar has never been at a lower level. Unemployment maybe down but wages are stagnant to lowering.

Then there's open borders.... when the vast majority say they want tighter borders and a control on Illegal immigration, yet the Feds, in both parties from the Pres to Congress talk amnesty and open borders.... the government isn't listening to the people. (BTW until there is tighter border control, ANY "Patriot Act laws or Anti-Terrorism laws are bullshit.)

People see the government getting more involved in their lives and taxes going up, yet, fewer services offered.

People see the war, they want out, they don't like how it started and how it has divided us, but there hasn't been 1 good plan on either side to end it or to win it. It's a money pit and people see it as just one in many ways government is corrupt.

Speaking of corruption, we have elected officials getting away with bloody murder, so to speak and nothing happens.

People see that the campaigns have become all about raising money and NOT about facing the issues, listening to and helping the people.

It's not one party, it's both parties and unlike some who want to claim it's one issue or one party.... I tend to see it as the above and I believe the vast majority do to.

I think we'll see voter burnout next year and extremely low turnouts.... this works for those elite that want to control the country (both parties).... They realize if we start this whole "campaign" bullshit a year and a half 2 years before the election and we have the press (from the NYT to Limbaugh and all in between) shove it down their throats on a daily basis, come primary time, the people will be burnt out.... come election time... very few will even care.

When you have people afraid of their own government in the USA, when you have idiots who take away people's rights and control elections to do so, when you have politicians who add to problems by taking away rights and being pessimistic instead of saying, "Let's work together and solve this problem." The people just give up, see no changes, see anyone who may have good ideas not have the money to run for dog catcher.... they give up.

As I stated in a thread a while ago.... optimism is hard and takes time because it has to flow uphill and keep working on it's momentum knowing it has to hit the majority of the space but can't hit it all.... pessimism flows from the bottom down filling all crevices and leaves nothing but despair and in the end destruction.

The sad thing is..... people I believe have given up and have no optimism left in the country. They need a strong leader that can undo what the past 18 years (probably in truth the last 30 years) worth of presidents and congresses have done.... and he needs to be able to do so in 1 term.

This is true and, unfortunately, this will never happen since the congress would have to pass this themselves... and i highly doubt any of them would vote themselves out of the job. At least not in this manner anyway. :p

I think many in Congress are more focused on self interests as opposed to the interests of the people who vote them into office. It seems like they wake each day thinking about what they can do to gain and maintain more power rather than doing what is right.

In my mind things are simple, if something is the right thing to do - support it, if not - don't support it. Hence the war in Iraq were we have people who are against the war but act in ways that support the war. People in Congress need to be clear and consistent.

Or the S-CHIP being debated, what is the goal? If the goal can not be clearly defined and agreed upon, we end up with incomprehensible legislation. My goal would be to make sure every child in this nation has health care coverage, hence the S-CHIP program would be scraped for legislation that would accomplish the goal. Simply do what is right.

I think most Americans are fed up with the games being played in Washington.

A lot of people don't think that the democrats have gone far enough in opposing the war.

paralysis.

it's hard to operate with the barely extant margins of control in congress that the democrats have and manage to do much that would keep approval ratings high.
tv viewers seem to prefer politics that resemble tv at the level of pacing. quick quick quick.

I don't think it was the 'anti-war' group that was a key factor as much as it was a very large block of americans who were just tired of the war, Weren't happy with the way it was being conducted, and just plain wanted it to end. Not necessarily 'anti' as much as wanting it over with. my 2cents anyway.

I think you've summed up the situation quite well, RB.

Paralysis might be the political reality, but I really don't think its the issue.

The Dems really haven't put any legislation about bringing the troops home. I mean the scale down idea is good, I can't recall if they actually put it through, or if they opted not to because it would get vetod.

But thats my point, they could at least stand for something, or against something and stick to their guns. Guess what, if they don't give Shrub his funding I guarentee those troops will start coming home, or things will get shaken up to a point that Bush will have to work with them.

well here's the problem--for me anyway---i dont understand how it came to pass that (a) the midterms were interpreted as providing anything like a single message to anyone about anything, much less (b) some kind of clear position about--not to mention a position against--the war in iraq.

it seems to me that the only clear message was that the modus operandi of bushworld was unacceptable. the midterms seemed to me entirely a huge rejection of the bush people and the paleo-conservatism for which they stand.

another way of looking at this:

paralysis in iraq has been doubled by paralysis in washington--so if there's a message in it, it seems to me about cognitive dissonance and a bizarre-o attempt to normalize paralysis and/or defeat. but that's as speculative as the takes on the midterms that impute to it a clear message on iraq.

what makes me suspicious of this "clear message" business is simple: the actually existing balance of parties in congress both houses is such that imputing a Mandate to the democrats is basically setting them up to fail. imputing a "bring the boys home" mission to the democrats is setting them up to fail.

so whose interpretation is this, that there is some single, clear message to november?

to the extent that this notion of a mission or mandate is unhinged from the realities of political trench warfare in a tightly divided congress which--against all reason (in my view) republican party discipline appears to still function---paralysis and expectations unhinged from it appear to be THE issue, THE problem. discussions underway above--which are fine in themselves, seem to me to all operate inside this bigger problem, as symptoms of it.


but i still have this sneaking impression that this mandate business is (a) a conservative meme that has migrated out of that hermetic little media world and (b) reinforced by the surreal "understanding" of democratic process that you get on tv--which as a medium full of talking heads who talk in roughly the same way about certain things, seems uncapable of thinking in terms of multiplicity of meanings, looking continually to reduce uncertainty and division by generating the illusion of unanimity or "message" or "mandate"---remember the reagan "landslide" that was created out of a victory involving 27% of the registered voters?

accepting this kind of narration of a fractured, incoherent polity seems like being willing to eat a hamburger that someone else has already chewed once, because you are too lazy to chew a virgin burger for yourself.

hmmm....that's a new one......

I think Ustwo was referring to the connotation of "anti-war". They have their Cindy Sheehans.

The average American who supported the war is probably tired of it and the casulities and want the kids back home, they aren't the vocal Vietnam hippie era types.

Congress consistently gets low approval ratings. True, not often as low as now, but always pretty low.

The Repubs lost their majority for a couple of reasons. One was because people wanted to send a message to Bush that they were displeased with the war. One was because they were fed up with the corruption and abuse of position. So, here we are a year later, the war is still going on, though the situation is somewhat improved. There's still plenty of corruption. The headlines are filled with infighting and partisan bullshit. So what's really changed? Not very much. Why should people have any higher opinion of Congress now that a different party is in charge? By any objective measure, the only thing that's different is which interest groups get stroked.

Just to tie to points roachboy brought up together:

Its seems as though the Dems are hoist in a bit of their own petard. The last Congressional elections were not quite the overwhelming victory that was portrayed in the media and claimed by the Dems. Now they are seen as ineffective when they can't deliver this putative authority, which of course they never had.

Maybe this is neither here nor there, but every time I hear about Congress and how people are desponded over its seeming lack of power I recall a point made by my political science professor. He made the point that there is quite an interesting difference between the Supreme Court and Congress. In Congress everything is public, all the prissy, inane and often boring machinations; in the Supreme Court, on the other hand, all the bickering is done behind closed doors. You never see the process. As a result of this openness it seems as though Congress is powerless, and generally counterproductive in most situations. The same though is never thought of the Supreme Court which seems to maintain an appearance of a united front, regardless of the fact that they can write a dissenting opinion on cases. I don’t know how much truth to asses to his point. This always seemed to make a lot of sense to me, and it may be a contributing factor in Congress’ constant low approval rating.

Actually, Albania, it's interesting. By all accounts, the nine members of the Supreme Court get along extremely well and have a healthy respect for one another even when they disagree. That is how adults are supposed to behave. I suspect Congress used to be that way when they weren't under a constant media microscope and thus always under pressure to play to the grandstands. From what I understand, the Intelligence Committees, which for obvious reasons meet behind closed doors, operate in a manner much more similar to the Supreme Court, for similar reasons.

I think of George Washington. If you look at the sort of man he was, part of his leadership ability was his cultivated distance: he consciously set about to be aloof, though still gracious. He kept an air of mystery about himself, serious and solid yet inscrutable. It helped that he was the tallest man in the room, but still - he made himself larger than life by deliberately eschewing petty activity. No one nowadays dares do anything other than be a "regular guy" - plus, TV tends to shrink people's stature by showing their "off" moments - and that has consequences. With the exception of Lincoln, the most formidable presidents all had distance and were larger than life: Jackson, TR, FDR. Modern presidents have been shrunk by TV, even the good presidents like Reagan and Clinton.

I'm not sure what the answer is or if there even is one. I believe in transparency, and I'm not sure how that squares with having formidable leaders. We may just have to live with having a Congress that resembles a gaggle of squabbling children.

i wanted to post a copy of jg ballard's short story " the secret history of world war iii" in response to loquitor's post above, but sadly i could not find an etext.
it is included as an appendix to the re/search edition of ballard's atrocity exhibition, which is a fine book worth tracking down for a host of reasons.
now there is another.

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it is strange to consider the scenario in no. 19 as outlining the way in which video footage reframes the branches of government simply by reproducing elements of their occurance (a branch of government being a process or framework rather than an object)...transparency is reduced to chaos or babble because the process that is being performed as transparent disappears behind the isolated images of people talking.

its not that these images are "wrong" in the sense that they are not factually incorrect--it is the case that for the duration of shot x characters 1 through 5 (say) try to talk over each other though attention is drawn to the odd behaviors of number 3 who waves a shoes about and seems apoplectic...(nice word)...but it is also true that characters 1 through 5 talk over each other because their actions are framed by a particular process, which does not appear in the footage, which cannot appear in footage because it is a process that unfolds in multiple registers simultaneously, is not contained within the congressional chambers but includes offices and staff and information flows and dynamics and may or may not include management of feedback loops from constituents and jockeying for position and/or votes and so is diffuse each time.


in the supreme court, there is an image of a more serence multiplicity fashioned through still photographs of judges sitting in chairs while wearing choir-like robes or making statements at a press conference or appearing as an elevated blur in those curious courtroom watercolors. here you have references to debate without the actual debate, references to deliberation without footage of the deliberation and so the court appears to be more orderly and mysterious than does congress.

in the person of the president, in the face of the president, you have a consistent illusion of unity. this is reassuring. a single face does not talk over itself, even if presidential control over grammar is such that certain utterances could be interpreted as originated from multiple subject positions mysteriously contained within the same face-frame. "o that's our george. a regular guy. my grammar sucks too." even if the presidential relation to text scrolling at speed across a teleprompter is distanced and uncomfortable, the presidential face is nonetheless a space for projecting a desire for single-ness, for narrowed information flows, for the absence of the cacophony of debate (which is all debate comes to when televised). the face of the president seems more open than the middle-ground between unity and diversity occupied by the supreme court. the face of the president is a type of transparency, a model for a type of transparency--that of a single individual who decides.

if you as a spectator despair of the direction the country is taking, it hardly sems plausible that you would dream of images of congressional chatter to address your despair...congress is a space of mutually exclusive propositions, of debate that sinks into itself, of paralysis. congress is terminally, uncomfortably multiple, and multiplicity only fits into a video frame in certain ways. but you, spectator: because you watch the news and conflate video footage of the world with the world, when you dream of redress for your anxiety you dream of the heroic individual who is able to rise above the cacophony of debate, who has a Will and is in a position to Exercise that Will.

this is why the carl schmitt view of democracy as endless babble particular to the bush white house resonates. it is fit nicely to the semiotics of television.

Acrimonious debates and disputes in Congress are as old as Congress itself.

http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefme...9/t029009a.jpg

This cartoon satirizes the intense factional fighting in President John Adams’s administration (1797-1801). On the right, Roger Griswold, a Federalist, holds a cane, while his adversary, Matthew Lyon, a Jeffersonian, holds fire tongs.
Sound familiar?

Yeah, and some Southerner (I forget who) beat the crap out of Senator Sumner of Massachusetts right in Congress, shortly before the Civil War. I believe he opened a gash in his head. Pretty nasty stuff, and Sumner became an instant hero in the North as a result. I think the Southerners made the assailant a hero, too.

If I were a US senator, I'd probably start fist fights, too.

you'd think that folk would find the multiple reassuring when they get around to imagining themselves in a political community, wouldnt you?

it'd be better than thinking in terms of a unified will.


btw, i was thinking more about how video footage alters the meaning of this debate-that-is-as-old-as-congress thing...looking at it more for what is discontinuous than for what is continuous.

Maybe it's because people found out how many days they actually work in congress...

Uncle Jay explains how hard Congress works
<object width="464" height="388" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000"><param name="movie" value="http://www2.funnyordie.com/public/flash/fodplayer.swf" /><param name="flashvars" value="key=26b0d09397" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed width="464" height="388" flashvars="key=26b0d09397" allowfullscreen="true" quality="high" src="http://www2.funnyordie.com/public/flash/fodplayer.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object><noscript><a href="http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/26b0d09397">Uncle Jay Explains the News - July 2, 2007</a></noscript>

Then the Northerners went and named a fort after him in Charleston harbor, just to rub it in.

uh, Jazz, no...... That was Fort Sumter, not Sumner.

I believe the Sumner Tunnel that connects Logan Airport and downtown Boston is named after Senator Charles Sumner.

Back on point, though, the problem with politics is aptly summarized in that I urge everyone to watch! The most perceptive editorial statement I have seen in a very long time.

Thanks Cynthetiq and loquitur for the video links. Our polititians may be screwed up and we voters may be superficial and since there is little we can do about it, frustration leads to laughter.:)

Democrats are mad at the Democrats for not doing what they promised to do, and Republicans are mad at the Republicans for not doing what they promised to do. And Democrats are mad at the Republicans and vice versa. Hence the poor polls.

The problem I have with Congress is that they have given up much of their Constitutional power. What morons gave Bush the power to declare War? That is a power that is Congress's, a group of people that are supposed to come to some sort of consensus before undertaking such a major action. Same thing with the budget. Money is supposed to be controlled by the House, Bush only get's to disapprove, and his veto can be overruled. Congress, take back your power. Bush, do your job of enforcing the laws of the nation and not making shit up like torture rules and secret wiretapping. Supreme Court, Don't try to award Bush the Nobel Peace Prize, just interpret the laws.

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