Reform Party Commentaries

On June 13, 2013, Gallup released its annual poll (http://www.gallup.com/poll/163052/americans-confidence-congress-falls-lowest-record.aspx) asking Americans about their confidence in various institutions. The data was collected in the first week of June. People expressing "quite a lot" or "a great deal" of faith in congress dropped from 13% in 2012 to 10% in 2013, with the remaining 90% expressing either "some" (38%) or "very little" (52%) confidence in the institution. That is the lowest level of confidence that Gallup has ever recorded for any of the societal institutions it asks about each year.

For context, it is worth considering this: What issues or institutions related to politics gets what is, in essence, a 90% disapproval rate from the public? Things like pedophilia, murder and unprovoked nuclear attacks on cities in non-combatant or peaceful countries probably elicit that kind of disapproval, but not much else unless it is similarly extreme. For most issues, public opinion is highly polarized and highly fragmented. That fragmentation does not seem to apply here. If you accept that perception of reality as basically true, then this degree of disapproval is truly remarkable.

Inevitable or not?

The situation is regrettable but maybe at least somewhat inevitable. As Gallup points out, some of the loss of confidence stems from the split control between the two parties. However, that doesn't fully explain these awful numbers. The Reform Party believes that there is a significant degree of inevitability in the situation, given the manner in which two-party politics is routinely conducted. As the Reform Party has argued elsewhere, spin is the work product that dominates both parties (http://reformparty.tumblr.com/post/53505876521/reform-party-of-california-essays-political). On top of that credibility-killing aspect, both parties or their politicians are co-opted and/or corrupted by, e.g., blinding ideology (http://reformparty.tumblr.com/post/52857310148/reform-party-of-california-essays-what-is-the), special interest money (http://reformparty.tumblr.com/post/53012960908/reform-party-of-california-essays-politics-and) and self-interest (http://reformparty.tumblr.com/post/53132458418/reform-party-of-california-essays-self-interest).

No wonder the vast majority of the public has lost faith in congress. Unfortunately, congress is a critically important political institution that needs to function to serve the public interest. At present, it is broken and looks to stay that way for some time. The two-party system always claims that factors such as special interest money have no ill-effects and that it is only there to serve the public interest. If that were true, then why is the public's confidence so low?

It is true that, if you are good at spin, you can fool most of the people some of the time. Despite that, if Gallup's data is correct, it looks like endless status quo spin is finally losing some of its power to persuade. It is about time.