Term Paper
“No man is ever good enough to govern another man without the others’ consent” –Abraham Lincoln. In current American politics, the United States congress has a low record of eleven percent acceptance rating. Despite such a low approval rating, the congress is still passing bills that become laws. In this essay, I will discuss how different political scientist argue as to why congress approval has been at an all time low. In depth, I will use Hibbing and Morse’s articles were the most persuasive of all other authors.
In “The American Congress reader” edited by Steven Smith, Jason Roberts, and Ryan J. Vander Wielen, the first chapter opened up detailing what is wrong with the American political system. In the article, John Hibbing …show more content…
As I mentioned earlier, the two articles see the legislative system as a person riding a bike. In this case, the congressman is riding the bike and the bike represents the legislative process. In the first analogy, the bike is broken but the public expects congress to make the bike function without questioning how it happens. In the second article, the bike is working fine, but the rider, or the congressman, does not use the bicycle to its maximum potential. The first article compared to the second one focuses on the kinks of the legislative system, but the second article argues that the politicians are the ones that hold the flaws in the …show more content…
Stimson took a completely different standpoint as to how congressional approval ratings are derived. In Stimsons article, he does not blame the legislative system or congressmen as to why approval ratings are where they are, but instead he ties in the countries economic state and relating it to how the public judges the president. “It credits presidents specifically for good and blames them for bad times…Movements in economic outcomes translate pretty directly into approval and disapproval.” (p. 18, 21) In his article, Stimson uses a wide variety of statistical analysis to detail why the congressional approval is correlated to presidential approval and the relationship to the congressional approval. On the economic side, consumer sentiment describes the overall economic state of the nation showed a drop in 1991. As the nations economy was at a low, so was congressional, senator and presidential approval and trust rates. Another factor in this time period was the beginning of President Clinton’s term in office. Once he entered Stimson described the government to have gone into a honeymoon state where congressional approval was growing because of the presidents popularity. Another example of the honeymoon stage that Stimson described was in 2009 when President Barack Obama went into office. He entered office with a tremendous amount of popularity and the congressional approval was also at a
“No man is ever good enough to govern another man without the others’ consent” –Abraham Lincoln. In current American politics, the United States congress has a low record of eleven percent acceptance rating. Despite such a low approval rating, the congress is still passing bills that become laws. In this essay, I will discuss how different political scientist argue as to why congress approval has been at an all time low. In depth, I will use Hibbing and Morse’s articles were the most persuasive of all other authors.
In “The American Congress reader” edited by Steven Smith, Jason Roberts, and Ryan J. Vander Wielen, the first chapter opened up detailing what is wrong with the American political system. In the article, John Hibbing …show more content…
As I mentioned earlier, the two articles see the legislative system as a person riding a bike. In this case, the congressman is riding the bike and the bike represents the legislative process. In the first analogy, the bike is broken but the public expects congress to make the bike function without questioning how it happens. In the second article, the bike is working fine, but the rider, or the congressman, does not use the bicycle to its maximum potential. The first article compared to the second one focuses on the kinks of the legislative system, but the second article argues that the politicians are the ones that hold the flaws in the …show more content…
Stimson took a completely different standpoint as to how congressional approval ratings are derived. In Stimsons article, he does not blame the legislative system or congressmen as to why approval ratings are where they are, but instead he ties in the countries economic state and relating it to how the public judges the president. “It credits presidents specifically for good and blames them for bad times…Movements in economic outcomes translate pretty directly into approval and disapproval.” (p. 18, 21) In his article, Stimson uses a wide variety of statistical analysis to detail why the congressional approval is correlated to presidential approval and the relationship to the congressional approval. On the economic side, consumer sentiment describes the overall economic state of the nation showed a drop in 1991. As the nations economy was at a low, so was congressional, senator and presidential approval and trust rates. Another factor in this time period was the beginning of President Clinton’s term in office. Once he entered Stimson described the government to have gone into a honeymoon state where congressional approval was growing because of the presidents popularity. Another example of the honeymoon stage that Stimson described was in 2009 when President Barack Obama went into office. He entered office with a tremendous amount of popularity and the congressional approval was also at a