Congressional approval rating is hard to really know. Like all polling the data is subject to variables such as who is aksed? what was asked? who answered ... and why did they answer.
There are recent polls that put the approval rating of Congress as low as 9%. However I would guess that it actually hoovers around 15%. I use 15% primarily because it's a nice round number but I also base that on a premise that has recently occured to me. Be it noted that I'm not sure I believe this premise nor do I think it a good excuse for elected leaders to punt leadership, however I offer this as a view of hope and eternal wisdom, not cynicissm.
I think there this probably a floor of approval for Congress at about 15% ... this floor is comprised of (hear me out):
1. 8.5% Simple majority of regular primary voters (primary voters being about 17%)
2. 6.5% A combination of people who actually agree with the policies of the current Congress (they did pass patent reform and 3 trade agreements, for the people that care about those isssues above others the 112th Congress has been fantastic), and perhaps some people who may agree with the following premise:
Congressional inaction is by design and obligation ...
HEAR ME OUT!
Let's take a few steps back ... The founding fathers where many things, visionaries, idealist, etc. But they were also products of their times. Wealthy elites in a world where it was not only acceptable but in many cases seen as divine right that the wealthy elite should rule over the populace (let alone women and slaves) for the populace's benefit. It is not an accident that even in the most liberal and populist founding documents of their age, the franchise of government was limited to those who were wealthy, male, white and of the correct faith.
And though it has been the history of our republic that the franchise is expanded over time, that expansion has never been easily won or immediatley embraced by those already in the franchise. Whether the voter suppression was overt (poll taxes etc.) or covert the systematic silencing of voices and end runs around their participation has been the rule not the exception.
The most sustained covert voter suppression on the Congressional level has been the re-districing process. As districts become increasinly lopsided in favor of a party the result is only the members of the local majority party get to decide who represents them in Congress. The minority party -and even the simple minority of the majority party are effectively silenced. And since in the most gerrymandered districts the winner of the primary is the winner of the general election, many members of Congress are the wholly owned subsidary of not the unsympathetic corporate interests or lobby pools but rather the elite majority party activist who though are earnest as any indiviual in their policy beliefs, are hardly representative of a communities national view or practical needs. Their world view is developed by and limited to about 15% and as result those people who are being represented are of course happy with the job Congress is doing.
But their world view is a very narrow world view. And though the founding fathers were not particularly interested in an inclusive franchise, they were supremely interested in all those who were in the franchise having equal right to power. Every foreseeable caution was taken to ensure that the voice of the Congress represented the complete voice of those in the franchise. What they couldn't bring themselves to do unfortunately is compell participation by those in the franchise. At the time it probably wasn't an issue but as the franchise increased combined with voter suppression efforts every step of the way, we now have a situation that the majority of those in the franchise are not participants in it.
So the Congress, representing only clean minority voices as opposed to the noisy majority voices as intended is working with clear mandates from a small class. A small class that in itself is deeply divided.
Congress is by design supposed to take in the broad diverse view of the populace and distill it to find the policy that does have broad consensus. However because of an emboldened minority in Congress both party's seeks to create policy that they think makes sense while coercing (or silencing) the minority into compliance.
I offer as a premise that the failure of the Super Committee on Deficit Reduction is actually exactly what is supposed to happen in this context. The Super Committee was tasked with a very big job. A job where there is no clear mandate from the divided 15% and no input from the remaining 85% of the franchise.
Perhaps what we have been calling partisan gridlock is actually just a safety valve.
hear me out ...
The current state of affairs is that Congress, designed to run on the input of all the disparate voices of the franchise, is now only being fueled by passionate minority voices. As a result of lack of fuel (or bad fuel depending on your viewpoint) the engine just shuts itself off to protect itself from further damage.
I agree that this is not a time for inaction. This concept is not intended to apologize for lack of leadership. However ask yourself do you really want THIS Congress to do anything? Example, without doing a poll I would expect that a majority of those in the franchise i.e. registered voters of any party affiliation over the age of 18 but still breathing, would be in favor of Congress passing a federal budget. However they haven't done so in quite awhile. Why? Because while there is clear directive from the extreme left and right there is no voice of the center. Members of Congress are supporting the ideology of the small electorate, not distilling the voice of all people to find some small area of consensus to move forward with. Since the fuel is rancid the engine shuts itself down.
I argue that if primary voting regardless of party reached a majority of active voters, the candidates coming out of primaries would be more moderate, representing (or better said beholden to) a wider swath of ideas. The general election between two moderates would result in the most moderate (or rather most broadly beholden) candidate winnig.
Granted this would yield the kind of politicians many people think they don't want ... unprincipiled, compromsing at every turn, placing expediency over virtue flip-floppers. You know just like now like we have now.
But the incentive model for compromise will have fundamentally changed.
Our national legislative body, (not unlike our local elected body in Boulder with our all at-large, minority electorate for City Council) in it's current form is incredibly susceptible to the influence of powerful minority interests. With a small zelaous, ideologically charged electorate it is very easy for those with influence to retain and expand their influence.
With a large electorate elected officials must at best find and hold themselves to what few areas of broad consensus exist or at worst avoid being too far into any particular ideological corner. It is easy to point fingers at corporate money, lobbying and special interest groups as the reason Congress is ineffective however at best those are only rationale for why Congress does things that individuals disagree with.
I offer that the root of the problem is that a small electorate is like diesel being poured into a Twin Turbo Gasoline engine.
We have a population that is more moderate than the electorate and an electorate that is more moderate than the much smaller primary electorate. Add to this (and I argue as result of this) we have a Congress that believes it's job is to create and sell its policy as opposed to distilling the combined wisdom of the governened and turning the limited consensus into policy.
Therefore our founding father's have given us a collective time out.
The House of Representatives was designed to be the virtue of the populace and the Senate a further distillation to ensure only policy that has incredibly broad consensus can become national law. Without proper fuel the engine SHOULD cease to run.
This is granted a bit of tough love. Refueling our legislative engine can only come from increasing participation in primaries to levels equal to general elections (and increasing that as well to much higher levels) then accepting that the noise of the masses is better than quite of the minority. We have to accept that within the noise is truth. As individuals it does not require setting aside your ideology or bias but it does require making that voice heard while respecting the right of others to disagree.
And this may be the hardest part but it also requires allowing politicians to be exactly that. Politicians!
Activist and Politicians serve different and important roles in our public discourse and while it is essential that activist hold fast to their views it is equally important the politicians have a much more flexible worldview that balances passion and pragmatism. It's not to say politicians should not have ideals or agendas, but it is to say that those ideals and agendas should only come to fruition as the result of their wisdom being made plain to their colleagues rather than the accident of their party having a majority in Congress at the time.
Like a well designed modern engine our centuries old Congress has a safety valve. Without proper fuel Congress is actually limited to only must-do emergency policy ... you know things that have broad consensus such as not going into national default. If you look at what the past few Congress have actually accomplished and compare those things to the public opinion polling of the time you see that very little was done, most of which also enjoyed at least simple majority public support at the time.
Congress does not know enough to determine the best way to reduce the defict among many other things because the electorate has not made its full voice heard. It's not that we don't have serious problems that demand bold and solutions in a timely fashion. It's that Unfortunately our legislative engine was not designed that way. Our engine was designed to run on the full voice of those in the franchise ... or not at all. Congress is not solely responsible for our nation's problems, whether they be economic, environmental or otherwise, we are all in our own way complicit and in our own ways empowered to fix them.
The eternal wisdom of our founding fathers is that the ability of any ideology to hold too much power is to be avoided. Even if that group is simply a vocal minority that has power due to the apathy of the rest of the franchise it is still dangerous. And when the power rest in the hands of those drunk with ideology the engine will stall until it can be regained by a sober hand.
And right now the 15% is as drunk as a frat boy on his 21st birthday.
Sobriety can only be returned by the 85% and that's simply going to take awhile.
Is Congress broken? Well perhaps not broken but it is in SAFE mode, and though we would be better off if it was functioning properly this is still better than if our situation was made worse by a very active but broken Congress.
I've yet to see a toddler think that their time out was well timed, however I do see the wisdom of our founding fathers telling our current political class that it's time for them to sit in corner and think about what they have done.
Here's some fun additional reading to help you draw your own conclusions:
Congressional Approval rating, click here
Primary Voting turnout, click here
And a member of Congress who may actually agree with this premise ... click here
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