A new Reuters/Zogby poll is out, and our national pols do not fare very well, as one would expect. President Bush shows an approval rating of 24%, while the Congress comes in at less than half of that: 11%. This only continues what is now a long term trend. The public is fed up with politics as usual...and should be.
This is not going to change until the pols get a clue about the whys of this, and so far it is clear that they have no clue at all.
The President lost a lot of credibility by leading us into a war that most supported, but was based on inaccurate intelligence, and executed with the wrong strategy in place. That part could be forgiven, I suppose, but not the part that came later. Knowing the intel was bad, and knowing the strategy was not working, he stonewalled the country for over three years, never acknowledging the mistakes, nor making any real effort to change the strategy. Only when his party lost control of Congress did he get the point. This occurred too late to salvage his reputation, but hopefully not too late to salvage the war effort.
Then on to Congress.... What can one say? The whole kit and kaboodle of them are making the strongest possible case for Will Rogers' statement that "the only native criminal class in America is Congress."
The Republican Congress was elected in 1994 with a "contract with America" that pledged, among other things, to balance the budget, cut out pork, and reduce the size of the government. Well, the budget did get close to balance during the Clinton Administration (if one can believe the silly and arcane methodology the government uses to measure such things), but upon the ascension of the Republican President, the majority went mad, setting new records for pork with every session, and letting the budget get far out of balance. This greed...and that is what it is.... was compounded when the President failed to veto anything but the Stem Cell Bill. Some are already in prison, and others are under investigation. Let us hope the Justice Department pursues the rest of those that have violated the law.
Of course, the conduct of the Republicans outraged the voters, and that was sufficient in 2006 to unseat enough of them so that the Democrats took control of Congress. Other than the war, the main theme of the Democratic campign was to "change the culture of corruption" in Washington.
So what happened? Well they did change it, but arguably for the worse. "Earmarks" apparently now are being sold for campaign contributions. See, for instance, this site. After a spike in approval ratings for Congress after the election, the public got wise, and ratings fell rapidly, and are now lower that they were in 2006.
It just appears that both parties are so busy slopping at the public trough that they cannot see how disgusted their constituents are getting with the whole process. No wonder voter turnout is so low, and getting lower. The choices are between twiddle dee dee, and twiddle dee dum.
If someone sees Diogenes (or his ghost), tell him not to bother taking his lantern to Washington, D. C. It would be a waste of his time.
