10/12/09
It strikes me as terribly unfair and more than a little ironic that only 21 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. At the risk of even fewer than 21 percent of readers approving of this column, I'm going to go out on a limb here and defend those crazy kids.
Lord knows it's easy to bash Congress, the 535-headed hydra monster of democracy. There are so many senators and representatives talking so much, and in such loud voices, that it's often hard to discern if anything's actually getting done. And you can count on at least a few people making headlines, the bad kind, at any given moment.
The current marquee names are Republican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada (extramarital affair with a campaign aide married to his Senate chief of staff; may have violated laws and Senate rules by giving her $96,000 and securing lobbying work for her husband) and Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of New York (investigation ongoing into questionable fundraising practices, failure to report assets, failure to disclose and pay taxes, and why he has four rent-controlled luxury apartments in New York).
And then there is the contest for what Democratic strategist Tracy Sefl calls "loudmouth of the week." Winners so far include South Carolina Republican Joe "You Lie!" Wilson and Florida Democrat Alan "Die Quickly" Grayson. "The hyper-coverage of the outliers affects the perceptions of the whole body," Sefl says.
Still, 21 percent. That's a mere quarter of the all-time high of 84 percent, achieved in a rally-round moment after the 9/11 attacks, and barely better than the all-time low of 14 percent recorded by Gallup in July 2008.
The irony is that this plunge comes at a time when many in Congress are doing just what politicians should do and what President Obama has asked of them: Instead of veering from "shock to trance" in a reactive mode, as he once put it, they are trying to deal with large, complicated, long-term problems such as soaring health costs, millions of uninsured, oil dependence, climate change, new regulations for Wall Street and -- not least -- severe recession and job losses.
This is a case of no good deed going unpunished, particularly for Democrats who control both chambers and face a near constant wall of solid Republican opposition. The $787 billion stimulus package, along with bailouts of banks, General Motors and Chrysler, have been deeply unpopular. But most objective observers, including economists, say these steps taken by Obama and former president George W. Bush averted a collapse of the U.S. economy. Republicans who insist the stimulus plan is not working remind me of my son who, when he was small and sick, used to insist he didn't need medicine. We'd make him take it, he'd start feeling better, and then he'd say, "See? I told you I didn't need it."
The Gallup Organisation broke this rating down like this in an August 31 Rightardia article: A recent Gallup Poll also indicates that
Republicans in Congress have a 13 per cent approval rating. Democrats in Congress have a 55 per cent approval rating. Independents represented by Blue Dog Democrats aren't much better than the GOP at 22 per cent.
Sometimes you have to dig a little deeper to see what is really going on. The Republicans and Blue Dogs are the ones who are dragging the Congressional ratings down. The Republicans also plan to attack Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the forthcoming election cycle.
Good luck with that approach. A lot of women will be offended by undeserved attacks on Fancy Nancy.
source: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/10/12/in-praise-of-congress-yes-really/
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