20 April 2008

Dear Congress:

The president's approval rating is 31%.  His administration has repeatedly lied to the American people, ignored and denied global warming, overseen the increase of the price of a barrel of oil from $20 at the end of 2001 to $117 today, encouraged an "ownership society" leading to record foreclosures, punted on the problems of medicare and medicaid, led us to preemptive war under false pretenses without a semblance of a plan and even systematically broken international law61% of historians are ready to declare this the worst presidency of all time.

You came in with a mandate after the elections of 2006.  The mandate was simple.  Use checks.  Use balances.  Put a stop to this disaster.  Even if you can't get us out of this hole until 2009, at least stop the digging.

But you haven't.  You are spineless.  You have given in to every demand of the White House.  As difficult as it must be for the president to have convinced 31 out of 100 people in this country to approve of the job he is doing, it is apparently even more difficult for you.  Your approval rating is a humiliating (at least I hope it's humiliating) twenty-two percent.  22%!  The worst president of all time can find nearly 50% more Americans who approve of the job he is doing than you can.

You are a disgrace to the very concept of representative democracy.  Tighten up.

Sincerely,
The Tighten Up Report

5 comments:

Pepper said...

awesome. this has my nomination for best post. ever.

Publichealth_Weaver_Gregory(TA) said...

Great post. It always begs the question- does Congress intentionally cultivate this air of deadlock so that individual politicians are rarely held accountable to their constituents? A la - "It wasn't me, it was the malfunctioning congressional body." Basically the idea is to create deadlock until people stop paying attention. It actually works pretty well- incumbents rarely lose modern day elections.

Orville said...

Matt, what exactly should Congress do to "put a stop to this disaster [sic]?"

Yours in line-item blogpost detraction,
Orville

Brenda Starr said...

Frankly ... 'Merica elected these fools ... and despite their dismal approval rating they'll probably elect most of them again.
If you agree with this gentleman ... it's not going to get any better:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/opinion/19herbert.html

Sorry guys ... until the country tightens up we are going to have one loose representative Democracy.

bodenner said...

that's a pretty simplistic take. i'm no expert on -- or fan of -- congress (brenda? erin?), but the democrats' "mandate" (233-202, 51-49) is far short of the 2/3 majority needed to override an entrenched, petulant president and a disciplined, highly-partisan minority.

and that 22% approval rating isn't anything new; americans have always given congress a dismal approval rating. the only reason bush has a higher rating is because he's an actual person (arguable, i know) instead of some faceless, bureaucratic thing called "congress" (which, remember, comprises both democrats AND republicans). i bet if you averaged all the separate approval ratings of congressional members, you'd get a number much higher than 22%.


(btw, right now, pelosi is playing hardball pretty successfully against bush's trade deal with colombia.)