congress

this post is really interesting. It's about how comparisons of Bush's approval rating and Congress's approval rating are misleading. It makes a lot of intuitive sense when you think about it, but I hadn't really thought about it. The basic idea is that yeah, Congress's numbers are low, but they're *always* low. In fact, apparently in the last 27 years, their approval rating has only gotten above 50% twice. This makes sense because you might like what what your personal representatives are doing doing, but that doesn't mean you'll like what the other 500-odd people you didn't vote for are doing. On the other hand, presidential approval ratings are usually above 50%. This also makes sense because everyone votes for the president and the winner will usually have at least 50% of the vote. Presumably, unless s/he really fucks up, the president is going to keep a lot of that support, and might even pick some up from the other side. So even though Congress and the President are both polling in the 30's, it's much worse for Bush. It's a lot harder to make 65% of the population hate 1 person than it is to make them hate a legislative body of hundreds who are constantly bickering with each other.

The other interesting thing I hadn't thought about was that even Congresspeople run against congress. Everyone wants to be against the "washington establishment," so of course you'll hear the president calling congress "do-nothing" or corrupt, but you're also going to hear congresspeople calling each other "do-nothing" or corrupt. Of course Congress polls low--it's giving itself bad PR!