Approval Ratings
| July 18th, 2008 by Robert | Word Count: 1368 | Reading Time 5:27 | 2,874 views |
I just read an interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over at CNN.com and the content tweaked my internal alternative thinking process. The lead for the story was a statement she made about George Bush being “a total failure.” It is a great sound bite to get your name and story in the headlines during a campaign race in which the Obama camp is trying to align McCain with everything Bush. The Democratic leaders are circling their wagons and doing their best at transferring all things bad to McCain. Let’s look at her statement in more detail: “God bless him, bless his heart, President of the United States — a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject.” She equates failure with losing credibility with the American people. While that is one way to be deemed a failure, does she have any legs to stand on for throwing such a statement around?
Nancy Pelosi has been House Speaker, the 3rd most powerful politician in the chain of command (Robert Byrd, President Pro Tempore of the Senate is the 4th and also from the Democratic Party), since January 2007. Also, during that time, the Senate has been under Democratic Party control and the House is evenly split with Independents being the swing votes. What exactly has Congress accomplished in the last 19 months when they are clearly in control of what legislation appears on the President’s desk? I remember the media pounding into our collective psyche during the elections of 2006 the Democratic Party was being given a referendum for change. They were being elected as a clear cut signal to the Republican Party that our current political environment needed to change and to steer our way somehow out of the war in Iraq. Do you remember those days? I sure do.
What have the “waves of change” brought us? Were the newly elected House and Senate representatives able to assert their control and bring us their campaign promises? Of course they haven’t, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation. What the elected officials accomplished was a victory for the party, not the American society. Party politics is about winning the game for their respective teams. In my opinion, it’s been a long time since governmental policy was truly focused upon the welfare of the citizens within our country. Yes, there are bills passed which on the outset look helpful. But if you look deeper into them, they are filled with party victories, pork if you will.
So, here we are, almost 2 full years after the national referendum vote for change and nothing has changed politically. How can that be? How can the lawmakers of our country in control of their respective domains, not create sweeping change when they only have a Presidential veto as the power to stop their changes? The veto can be overturned when sent back to the House and Senate. It does require a two-thirds vote to overturn, but if the bill is actually about the welfare of the American citizen, do we not believe our publicly elected officials will, in the end, side with sanity and reason? The entire problem with the system is as I have stated earlier, politics has turned into a game about winning.
What are they trying to win? Money. Power. Ego. Politicians have their reputations because they have earned them from years of self absorption. Can we ever trust a politician again? I think we can but I’m a believer in human nature. Eventually, we can turn the corner and rid our government of the lifelong power mongers who sit in Senate and House seats. The first way to achieve this is the basic rule of term limits. We should NEVER have people occupying the same seats for more than 2 terms no matter what the office is. Public officials are elected to serve our country, not their own needs. New blood, new ideas, and new energy are required within our halls of government.
I’m certain that I am not the only one who subscribes to this theory. Since the article title is “Approval Ratings,” let’s take a look. Currently, President Bush has an approval rating in the mid 20’s. People are fairly discontented with the direction our country is going and they blame him because it’s easy to blame the person theoretically in charge. Similar to a baseball team, if a team has the worst record, fire the manager, try again. Our “team” is distressed and it’s easy to blame our manager. He is the focal point of his party and our country and he knew that and he is willing to accept the blame. However, has he written one bill or signed into law anything he personally wrote? No.
We know Bush’s approval rating has been languishing for months and that’s typical for a 2nd term President. But since we were talking about Pelosi calling Bush a failure, where does she stand? The current approval rating of the Congress is at 14% and was recently under 10%. Just think about that. These are current poll data results. These are polls done with almost 2 years of data since our “referendum” vote in 2006. Who really is to blame here? Is it the people rowing the boat or the “captain” of the ship? I quoted captain because as you can see, I believe the office of the President is not an office which gives absolute control over our society. The President is at the mercy of the government below him. Yes, he has executive power and can control many things “on his own,” but directing our entire policy making body is not one of them especially when the House and Senate are not under his political party’s control.
Pelosi argues that people are not satisfied with the Congress because they have failed to end our involvement in the Iraq war. I say that is a part of it. People are generally fed up of being taken advantage of by our lawmakers. Our country is fast heading into a very dire economic crisis and Congress has nothing on the books to help correct our issues. We found out in the 70’s we were dependent on foreign oil, yet here we are 30 years later in an even worse situation. We found out long ago that we needed health care reform, but here we are with many people unable to carry health insurance. We found out long ago that social security needed reform. But here we are and nothing has changed on the vast majority of political warfronts. Issue after issue and nothing has changed for the betterment of society. This is through President after President and Congress after Congress.
We need change. Not the change voted on in 2006, we need change at the root of politics. Every single politician who has been in office for more than 2 terms should be immediately terminated. All offices “opened” up should then be voted upon to allow for new blood to enter our governmental halls. We need to remove the lobbyist money from campaigning. We need to return to people trying to solve the problems of society rather than making money off of our predicaments. We must have more than 2 political parties vying for offices. There has to be more choice and competition. Without choice and competition we will forever end up in the stalemate which we have so often seen from our governmental proceedings.
Rather than interviewing Nancy Pelosi, a CAREER politician and gathering a nice media sound bite, maybe we should be focusing on the true issues behind WHY the approval ratings for everyone in the government are despicable. NOBODY is doing their job in my opinion. I think our society deserves every single politician who has been paid to serve our country for the last 50 years to return their paychecks. On top of that, every politician elected should serve for free until things are righted. Serving your nation is about helping the society, not profiting because of it. My approval rating for our government as a whole is absolute disapproval.
on July 19th, 2008 at 11:44 am:
Another great article. I agree 100%.
Most of these people in these positions are just on a power trip. They forget about the voters that put them there. Once these people are in office it seems very easy for them to keep being re elected as most people don’t do any research to see what they have actually done while in office to help the country or to hurt the country. All they know is they are voting for a Republican or a Democrat and they recognize the name.
It makes me wonder if they pick their partners for marriage just because they are a man or woman or do they take the time to get to know that person. Voting is something that should not be taken lightly. How did these people vote on certain issues or did they decide not to show up to vote or did they abstain from voting? If we have people running our country that don’t take the time or interest to vote on important issues or decide to vote as “here”, they should be removed from office immediately without retirement benefits intact.
Like the old saying goes, “if you don’t stand for something then you will fall for anything”. I think that is where our country is, at the present time. I do hope that any one who votes will take the time to learn the important things about their candidate before voting, just for someone in the party that they always vote for.
If we could get 85 to 90% of the eligible voters out to vote, I believe things would change rather quickly.
on July 19th, 2008 at 5:56 pm:
Thank you for the article compliment, I surely appreciate it!
It is sad that our politicians have become self focused on money, power, and ego. The ones who do get elected are either run over by the tremendous power of those “in charge” or are sapped of their energy and determination by the unending political war that ends up solving nothing. That is why I agree with removing our career politicians. We need people who are willing to work together FOR US!
People just do not have the “need” to research who they are voting for since they believe the party determines how their representative is going to act for them. Party politics is where we have gone wrong. Americans aren’t a party, we are a society and we all have different viewpoints.
If we allow party politics to govern our society, then what we are left with is what we are living in. I would imagine most of the American society would agree considering the “approval” ratings that what we have currently is definitely not where we need to be.
on July 20th, 2008 at 5:32 pm:
You know what they always say. Keep everyone’s eyes on someone else and they are not looking at you. The congress is probably trying this out since they got nothing better to offer. When we look at the big picture, it overwhelms us, but we need to try to focus on every little part we can do and someday soon, before you know it, there are changes all around from picking holes in the ones who are smug and letting their guards down. Eventually, people will weed out the ones who are there only for the money and power, hopefully replacing them with ones who care.
on July 20th, 2008 at 6:06 pm:
I agree, our politicians are great at transferring blame and making sure we are talking about issues they are unwilling to face. In the end, the media is at the mercy of the politicians in power because if a media segment doesn’t “play the game,” they will be starved of information and removed from the air waves. Big money, big media, and big politics is what we see.
Political America is one and the same as Corporate America. Except, in Corporate America, there is competition amongst the profiteers. In Political America, it’s a 2 horse race.
I can only hope a return to normal comes and people who truly care are given their voice. But, we need a generation of people willing to stand up and fight four our country, not fight for money and power.