For the first time, I have to admit that I have absolutely no confidence that either party can make any progress whatsoever on any issue that is important to me.  For the first time, I have to conclude that voting for anyone is a mistake, because I don't believe in anyone's platform, and even if I believed what they said, I can't believe they believe it.

Unfortunately, I think the majority of the people who answer these polls just don't have the knowledge to back up their opinions.  The American people don't have the first clue what the President is responsible for.  They don't understand the separation of powers or the roles of each branch.  They just listen to the BS they hear from their favorite celebrity, and believe what they hear.  And the politicians in both parties are just chasing those people's votes.  

It is very frustrating to say the least.  I used to be republican, but I just can't see how anything they do or say is going to help.  But, in my opinion, the democrats are just as bad, if not worse.  I can't vote for either, but what alternative is there?  Voting for some other third party candidate is symbolic at best.  But I've given up on voting for the least bad candidate.  If the candidate is bad, why shoud least bad be acceptible?

I guess the good news for me is that I don't think things are as bad in the world as a lot of other people do.  I like my personal life, and the things politicians do don't personally affect me very much.  I know there are people out there in this country that don't have it as good as I, but my vote for some politician, out of allegiance to the party won't help any of those people.  And, I can count on all the bloggers here to make sure we all know it when any republican, oops, I mean politician, steps out of line.

I am very interested in world and national issues, and I love to discuss ideas about how to solve them.  But in the end, I don't know how depending on democratic or republican politicians to solve them will ever work.  Hopefully I am wrong, and the next round of elections brings people who actually care about the issues they promise to address.

dusty,  I have been around for about a year, but I don't have a lot of time to spend here.  I have gotten involved in some heated discussions from time to time, but not very frequent.

My biggest problem is all the bashing, mostly republican and Bush bashing on this site, but also bashing of anyone and everyone who seems bashable.  I think a lot of politicians start out with good intentions, then two things happen.  First, once elected, they find out that they really don't have the power they thought they would have and their constituents don't understand why nothing is getting done.  Second, they succumb to the pressure of the media, the voters, and the special insterests, and they end up just simply chasing votes for the rest of their career.  Also, the government is so big, that it is impossible to manage it.  I have worked in large companies that were actually managed well, but even so, there was always some amount of waste that got through, no matter how hard managment tried to control it, and there were always going to be bad decisions made, even though the decision makers are intelligent people.  The government is so big that these problems are multiplied hundreds of times over what they are at the largest companies. 

So, bashing any of them is really useless and only serves to raise your blood pressure.  People get so caught up in the critisizm of our leaders, but they couldn't do better themselves.

"The recent gain in the Democratic Party's image advantage is due primarily to a sharp decline in Americans' favorable perceptions of the Republican Party more than an improvement in the public's perception of the Democrats."  I think this is a very revealing comment.

I wonder if these polls were done during other periods of strong American sentiment, such as during the Vietnam War, or during the beginning of the Reagan administration just after the American hostages were freed from Iran?  I would guess that the favorable perceptions of either party are going to be tied more to the general puplic's feelings and the popularity of current events at the time than to who the president is or who's in control of Congress. 

Other than that comment, I don't think I can add anything more to the discussion, as you've both expressed my sentiments exactly, including my feelings about the personal bashing that's been going on as of late.