If one more condescending elitist in Washington says the public is “fat, dumb and happy” I’m going to scream.
Professor Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia put the conventional wisdom a little more delicately: “These are good times. They’re not that crazy about Congress, but they really don’t care.”
It’s true, of course that the American people are happier when the economy is strong. Why shouldn’t we be? Our hard work and smarts made it happen.
But we’re not so happy with our government. The Center on Policy Attitudes reported that: “the majority of Americans is quite dissatisfied with the American government. Given that the US economy is booming … one might expect Americans to show higher levels of satisfaction. Nonetheless, fewer than a third of Americans say that they ‘trust the government in Washington to do what is right’ most of the time.” The study also found that 83 percent of us believe special interests have more influence than voters, 67 percent say government doesn’t understand what they think, 89 percent say gridlock in Congress is caused more by partisan posturing than honest disagreement.
The bottom-line is that this is our government and it should listen to us, but it doesn’t. The career politicians would like us to be “fat, dumb and happy” so that we’ll shut up, pay our taxes and leave the decisions to them.
But until our representatives stop putting their own careers ahead of the public interest, the American people will not be happy. Even in good economic times, we want a government that works for us.
Is anyone in Washington listening?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.