Congress less popular than, well, so many things

Cloning sheep. Cloning humans, even. Caning teen vandals. Believing that aliens have descended from space and abducted humans.

These are all things that, at one time or another, have enjoyed more public backing than Congress is getting right now.

Gallery

Debt talks: The White House releases photos from the debt negotiations.

More on this Story

• Congress less popular than, well, so many things
• Poll: Most dissatisfied with political system
• See the complete Washington Post poll data
• Public thinks S&P had it right, poll says

View all Items in this Story

• Poll: Record high seek new representation
• Congress reaches new lows, again
• Read more on PostPolitics

Even President George W. Bush, at his lowest of lows during the 2008 financial crisis, was more popular than the men and women who currently occupy Capitol Hill.

Ragging on Congress, with its sluglike reaction times and inspiring displays of public bickering, has long been a favorite national pastime.

But recent polls indicate that Congress’s approval ratings have sunk to all-time lows. Which is pretty bad for an outfit that’s been around since 1787.

A recent CNN poll found that just 14 percent of Americans surveyed approved of how Congress has been doing its job.

And a new Washington Post poll found that only 17 percent of Americans surveyed thought their representative should be reelected in 2012.

“These are notably low,” said Charles Stewart III, a political scientist at MIT.

Stewart said Congress might possibly have been even less popular during the days leading up to the Civil War, or during the less-remembered political upheavals of the 1880s and ’90s. But it has never been rated lower since the advent of widespread public polling on Congress, which Stewart dated to the 1970s, than it has been in recent days.

“It’s undoubtedly reflecting a generalized disgust with the institution,” he said.

For a little comparison, a 1997 ABC poll found that 39 percent approved of cloning sheep. Pollsters for Johns Hopkins University found in 2002 that 18 percent approved of human cloning.

A survey from Gallup in June showed that Americans have more confidence in banks and even HMOs than in Congress.

And Americans, as polled by CNN in 1997, were 3 ¹ / ₂ times as likely to believe in alien kidnappings than they now are to approve of Congress.

And 37 percent of respondents told the Los Angeles Times in 1994 that they thought it was a good idea to cane teen vandals, after an 18-year-old was famously sentenced to a beating in Singapore.

There was no available information on what percentage of Americans think it’s a good idea to cane members of Congress — or to abduct them.

The causes of the revulsion are both obvious and bedeviling: a constitutional system set up to promote divided and gridlocked government. General anxiety about a lagging world economy that makes Congress’s clashes appear even more reckless. A media environment that caters to partisans and spotlights conflict.

And, maybe most important, a political class that reflects real and deep divisions among the people it represents about the proper size and scope of government.

“If the Constitution was designed to create gridlock, and we’ve discovered the Congress and the president are in gridlock now, who should we really blame here?” Stewart asked.

But that doesn’t mean Congress couldn’t give image improvement a try.

Second chances are quintessentially American, and there are tons of examples of hated companies and personalities who have successfully turned things around that Congress could look to for inspiration.