A reason to get involved

    A recent Rasmussen Reports survey asked respondents whether they would vote to throw out the entire Congress and start anew if given the opportunity. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said yes, and just 17 percent said they would keep the current lawmakers in office.
    According to the report, just under half of all respondents believed that "the current Congress [is] better than individuals selected randomly from the phone book." A full third disagreed with this assessment, and 19 percent were unsure.
    While acknowledging the possibility of a certain margin for error, this essentially amounts to a bare majority of the public believing that the current Congress is no more effective at their jobs than the proverbial man on the street; that is to say that any bar fly, college student, retiree or hockey mom would be at least as well-equipped to deal with America's problems as the legislators toiling in Washington today.
    First of all, we at the Daily believe that this does a disservice to the men and women serving in the Capitol. While we often take issue with the acts of individual congressmen, on the whole we are supportive of the institution and appreciative of the hard work of its members. Legislators in Washington have a difficult job; they spend a great deal of their time away from their families, struggling to pass legislation and make beneficial policy and then must read that the public wants to give their job away to any random person who wants it.
    However, even if these feelings are unjustified, they are important, and they point not to Congress' lack of ability, but to the American people's lack of action.
    At the end of the day, these numbers suggest that literally half of Americans should be demanding that their congressman or senators either focus on the issues that matter or step down. They suggest that half of Americans should be engaged enough in the process to be able to make their plainly serious displeasure known. They suggest, at the very least, that well over half of Americans would make the nominal effort to show up at the ballot box every time these apparently ineffectual legislators are chosen.
    Yet turnout for midterm elections, when Americans are not voting for president, remains under 50 percent. Even in 2006, a year that featured many competitive races in the House and the Senate, just over 40 percent of eligible voters bothered to cast ballots — and this was seen as a high-turnout election.
    If you are so disgusted by the state of legislative activity in Washington that you would be willing to roll the dice on a completely randomized government-by-phonebook, why wouldn't you register your disappointment? Why wouldn't you get involved in politics? Why wouldn't you engage in advocacy?
    Politics and the development of policy are patriotic undertakings. More than personal glory, they are about public service. They are about solving the problems that plague our society and making life a little bit better for the people who live in our nation. Certainly, politicians have their problems. But we, as citizens, have our responsibilities. Government by the people, for the people was a hard-sought and hard-won victory. It is time that we begin living up to that promise.