73 percent of Americans say we're headed in the wrong direction

The right track/wrong track thing is kind of like the Congressional approval ratings. We've become so fractured as a nation - I'm sure one person's "right track" is another person's "wrong track."

 

What percentage of the 73 percent think Obama or the Tea Party can solve the problems?

What would the numbers be if we implemented a balanced budget and have austerity measures implemented that would make the Greek measures look like tiny cuts?

 

The approval rating of everyone would be zero. Because everyone wants austerity, unless it affects them. The debt ceiling debacle, I think, along with Paul Ryan's budget, really opened some people's eyes. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

 

WI barely have memories of the late 70s, but there seem to be a ton of parallels. We've moved beyond a bad economy to questioning whether America itself is fundamentally broken.

 

Wait. Things aren't going well?

 

That also was an effect of the previous few years. You had Americans questioning why they should trust one party at all because of Watergate, and not liking the other because the president appeared incompetent.

Reagan, for all that I disagreed with him on, at least had an optimistic personality which attracted voters. The problem with the GOP today is that any candidate who did that would come across as delusional.

 

Aww he's drunk!!

 

The buzzword the past couple of years out in California is "ungovernable," and I think that's what's happening with the federal government too. The only way anything is going to happen is when the president and both houses are from the same side, because winning the game is so much more important to everyone than running the country is.

The flip side is, for ungovernability and anarchy, California isn't so bad. That's why I was in favor of Obama staring down the Tea Party over the debt ceiling and taking it all the way to a government shutdown -- seems like we have one of those every year and you barely notice it if you notice it at all.

 

What is just so frustrating right now is how many workable solutions there are if one or the other side weren't so focused on winning elections. I'm reading a book about health care policy - "Your Money or Your Life" - that is completely apolitical, and makes a ton of sense about what our problems are and how we might fix them. That's just an example. The fixes are, in some cases, so tantalizingly right there. But we have children running things.

 

I was totally in the dark. How did you guys even hear about this?

 

The problem is that House and Senate seats are very powerful, cushy, perk-laden jobs. People want them (and want to keep them) so badly that they're willing to do almost anything to do so. Add in the power and perks that come with being in the majority party, and it's no surprise members of Congress act the way they do.

You want to fix this problem? You'll need to enact term limits for Reps and Senators AND take away some of the perks of these positions. But that would require Reps and Senators to kill their golden goose - good luck with that.

 

And yet we keep re-electing people who support the same system and same way of doing things. Voters seldom hold our Reps and Senators accountable when they betray our trust. And even when we do, the system only allows for one alternative, which inevitably gets corrupted by the system as well. Any other options either get crowded out because they can't compete financially, are forced to settle for a quid pro quo with one of the major parties to have any power (the three "independents" currently in Congress) or they spend their entire terms fighting enemies on both sides and can't get anything done (Jesse Ventura).