If anyone doubted just how incredibly unpopular the U.S. Congress has become — and if you did, try to pay closer attention — Tuesday’s Gallup poll provided some bracing clarity: Congress has a 9 percent approval rating. That’s the lowest it’s been since Kool and the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie” was tearing up the pop charts and Richard Nixon was in the final days of the Watergate scandal (with an approval rating higher than 9 percent).
But that’s not really so surprising. The real shocker was a Quinnipiac University poll released the same day. Again, the headline number — President Obama’s approval rating fell to 39 percent, its lowest ever — was newsworthy, but not out of line with what one might have expected. The surprise came further down. To every issue on which Quinnipiac’s pollsters inquired, respondents said they trusted congressional Republicans to do a better job than Obama. They preferred the GOP on healthcare (43 percent-42 percent), the economy (45-41), the federal budget (45-40), and immigration (41-40).
Clearly, the failed rollout of the president’s health-care plan is causing the public to lose faith in him. But let’s remember that congressional Republicans forced the government to shut down and that it was still shut less than a month ago — and yet, today, Americans have more confidence in Republicans’ ability to govern than they do in his. I mean, yes, this is plainly a lesser-of-two-evils situation. But it’s pretty remarkable nonetheless: Republicans haven’t just survived the shutdown, they’ve prospered. At least relative to Obama.
