The question is WHY?

From a recent article in The Economist:

The polls tell a dismal tale. Only 29% of Americans approve of the president. Only 14% approve of Congress. And just 6% view the economy positively. Yet many Americans combine despondency about the big picture with personal contentment. More than 80% say they are satisfied with their own circumstances. Even more are satisfied with their jobs. And although nearly everyone despises Congress, most Americans like their own representatives.

It is accompanied by a graph that shows an ever-increasing percentage of people answering "dissatisfied" to the question "How do you feel about the way things are going in America?".

Also, in an article today at Salon:

Earlier this month, Rasmussen Reports announced the humiliating finding that "the percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits [9 percent] for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history." That extremely negative view of Congress cuts across partisan and ideological lines, as only small percentages of Democrats (13 percent), Republicans (8 percent) and independents (3 percent) believe that Congress is doing an "excellent" or even a "good" job. Perhaps most remarkable, some polls -- such as one from Fox News last month -- reveal that the Democratic-led Congress is actually more unpopular among Democrats than among Republicans, with 23 percent of Republicans approving of Congress compared with only 18 percent of Democrats. One would be hard-pressed to find a time in modern American history, if such a time exists at all, when a Congress was more unpopular among the party that controls it than among voters from the opposition party.

I think it's funny how often we rely on surveys that ask simply "Are you satisfied with...?", as if it doesn't matter "why" we are or are not dissatisfied. I might answer in the negative because I hear talk about raising taxes, destructive global warming solutions, or housing bailouts. Meanwhile someone else might answer in the negative because some people are too rich, congress isn't doing anything to keep our environment from wasting away, and too many villainous banks are foreclosing on people's home. Same answer, very different reasons. To me, it seems, those who are satisfied are effectively the "center" -- those who end up getting what they want most often. As the number of satisfied people get smaller and smaller, it just means we're getting more and more divided politically.