"The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history."
As of late, it seems that we have some democrats siding with some repubs and some repubs siding with the dems. Then you still have the extreme polar dems and repubs. Some shit is literally not getting done in congress because it is hard as f*** to get shit done. Bipartisan? PPPFFFFT! One thing that particularly comes to mind is when congress passed the funding for the Iraqi campaign that put a withdrawal time table in. George vetoed it. Despite the fact that some of their asses just recently got elected BECAUSE that campaigned for getting the f*** out of Iraq, the whole of congress didn't ban together and overturn that veto. I can't remember, but don't the overwhelming majority of Americans want to gtfo out of Iraq now? (I'm referring to the polls that are not necessarily representative of the whole of American opinion but are none the less, still pretty accurate.)
I'm sure you guys can think of other situations where the lines are effed up between what we would think is supposed to be bipartisan lines with the extremes still sprinkled in for good measure. That should diminish the confidence of the average voter who pays attention to what's going on. In addition to a sagging economy, f***ed housing market, escalating energy costs, continually and needlessly escalating medical and pharmaceutical costs, and a president that seems to be hit or miss with foreign relations*, congress not biding well with each other is not the only reason for this diminished confidence.
* Edit- I'm not saying that it is the government's fault for those problems or that the government is responsabile for remedying those issues.