A Corrosive Collapse In Confidence

The deep alienation that Americans feel toward their public and private leadership isn't likely to go away when the economy improves.

by Ronald Brownstein
National Journal
Friday, Aug. 13, 2010

The electoral wave threatening congressional Democrats this fall looks at least as big as the breakers that flattened congressional Republicans in 2006 and 2008. But the odds are high that this won't be the last storm surge from an angry sea of American discontent.

Democrats are facing a midterm drenching partly because they have inspired an ideological backlash among small-government voters. But their greatest problem is that they control all of Washington's levers at a time when most Americans are deeply unhappy with the country's direction. Even as voters prepare to send more Republicans to Washington, polls show that Americans are not enthusiastic about the GOP. Indeed, the arc of disillusionment spreads beyond the two parties to virtually every major American institution. If November's election allowed Americans the opportunity to fire not only members of Congress, but also the nation's entire public and private leadership class, they might take it.

This deep, broad, and visceral discontent is a recipe for social and political volatility. As recently as 2004, GOP strategists such as Karl Rove saw in George W. Bush's slim re-election evidence that Republicans were building a "narrow but stable" electoral majority. That was immediately followed by Democratic routs in 2006 and 2008 that reduced the GOP to virtually a rump Southern party and inspired Democrats to dream of their own lasting majority. Two years later, Democrats are struggling to hold even one chamber of Congress.

The severity of these swings testifies to the distance separating many voters from either party. When asked to rate the performance of congressional leaders in a SHRM/National Journal Congressional Connection poll last month, only about one-third of adults gave positive marks to either Republicans or Democrats. Strikingly, nearly three-tenths said they disapproved of the job performance of both Republican and Democratic leaders. That number rose to 41 percent among independents.

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