Above The Radar?

The center-right blogosphere is cheering the release of a Gallup poll on collective congressional popularity, which ain't very far above subterranean:

A new Gallup Poll finds continued low levels of public support for both Congress and President George W. Bush. Twenty-nine percent of Americans approve of Congress, down slightly from last month's reading (33%) and this year's high point of 37%, while Bush's approval rating is holding steady at 33%. Both the ratings of Congress and the president are slightly lower than their respective 2007 averages. Approval ratings of Congress are higher among Democrats than Republicans, while Bush's ratings are much higher among Republicans.

According to the May 10-13, 2007, Gallup Poll, 29% of Americans approve and 64% disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job. Congressional approval is down 4 percentage points since last month, and is 3 points lower than the 32% average measured during the first five months of the year. The high point for the congressional approval rating so far this year was the 37% approval measured in February. Although ratings are quite low, Americans have been more positive in their assessments of Congress this year than last year, when an average of just 25% approved of Congress.

Admiral Morrissey notes a factor of particular interest (at least to him):

Congress gets its worst ratings not from Republicans (25%), but from independents (24%). That should get the attention of leadership in both chambers, who owe their majorities to those independents.

He ties that to a Norm Coleman speech this week that, in turn, was echoed last night by good ol' Darth Queeg, the gist of which is that Americans want to see Republicans and Democrats "put aside their partisan differences" and "work together."

Pardon me whilst I hurl. If I may take a gander at averting complete composure loss, might I suggest that what "independents" want to see is not so much the parties "working together," as though partisan differences were inherently illegitimate, but rather actual results. I.e. As with all orthodox pragmatists, the means matter far less to them than the ends.

Let me reiterate at this juncture that I pay little attention to generic congressional polling. The reason is very straightforward: ours is not a parliamentary democracy. We don't vote for parties in legislative canvasses, we vote for our individual representative and one senator at a time two out of every three cycles. Generic congressional approval numbers are pretty much always in the crapper, but the party with the majority usually remains entrenched in power anyway because while most voters think Congress as a whole sucks ditchwater, they tend to like their own rep. It takes a long time for public dissatisfaction to build to the point where a sea change becomes a viable possibility.

Last November was one of those occasions for the GOP due mostly to the failure of the Bush Administration to fight the war to a swift and victorious conclusion (doubtless the chief motivation for "independents"). To the extent there were other factors they centered around the disgust of the old majority's own base with how Republicans had deteriorated into "Donk Lite" on spending, "earmarks," and other trappings of power. Consequently, the means of making up 2006's losses would appear to not be through "working with the Democrats," but rather (1) aggressively pushing a base-rallying conservative alternative agenda and (2) doing everything they can to block that of the Dems.

The GOP remnant has been AWOL on the former and somewhat successful at the latter, though they've had a lot of help from an unexpected source:

Democrats face a legislative traffic jam that threatens to leave the party without a single high-profile domestic victory heading into the Memorial Day recess.

On issues ranging from energy policy to a lobbying overhaul, Democrats acknowledge that they must show as soon as possible that they can govern.

Which, of course, they're really not much interested in doing, preferring to use their restored power to continue their left-wing jihad against George W. Bush:

[T]he Democrats will suffer to some degree from a do-nothing image, but the real problem will be if voters conclude that they aren't really interested in conducting the people's business through constructive legislation, but rather want to use their majorities mainly to conduct their war against President Bush through endless investigations and other forms of harassment. The current low ratings suggest that this may already be happening.

In many ways the Dems resemble the proverbial "pitiful, helpless giant"; or, to employ a basketball metaphor, a "tweener" - in the majority technically, but not by big enough margins to be able to either topple the Bushies in a bloodless coup, defund the war (even clandestinely), nor carry out the magnitude of grandiose EuroSocialistic utopia-building that fuels their extremist wet dreams. They want to do everything at once, but that level of clout is still another 2006-like election away.

Will they get it? You'd have to say their chances are pretty good. One worthless generic congressional poll eighteen months out isn't indicative of any true change in the prevailing political winds, any more than a low pressure system can reverse the direction of the jet stream. The GOP minority can do what it can to attract both its base supporters and "independents" back in their direction (as opposed to pandering to the Left's definition of "bipartisanship" equalling capitulation). The Dems can waste the balance of the 110th Congress on empty posturing and precipitating national security disasters.

But there is a reason why the Republican majorities held on for a dozen years, and the Dems for four decades before that: for all the political cliches about "change," that is a much rarer commodity than anybody wants to admit.