The Columnist Manifesto

Grteat comedy shows like The Daily Show and, now, The Colbert Report, are rarely wall-to-wall laughs. When you hear second-hand accounts about their content, it's never the dull stuff or the incessant commercial interruptions, so there's always a certain level of reality-based disappointment when you watch it and find the brilliant moments are scattered and take up maybe 5-8 minutes of the half-hour show.

Nevertheless, moments of brilliance there are, and I greatly admire the satirical genius of Colbert's regular segment, "Better Know a District," in which he interviews members of the House of Representatives. I had wondered what the congresspeople think of being satirized to their faces, and today's NYT story on "Better Know a District" explained. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "the only thing worse than being made fun of on Comedy Central is not being made fun of on Comedy Central." Or "there's no such thing as bad press."

The story dutifully reports one half of one of the great paradoxes of our time: the fact that over 60% of the American public has nothing but disdain for Congress.

Such dissatisfaction with Congress might spell good news for Democrats regaining a majority, since you think it would give challengers an edge. But that's not how it works, and I personally hold out little hope that Dems will retake Congressional majorities any time in the near future unless some disaster occurs that can only be blamed on Congressional Republicans.

The other half of the paradox, is that incumbent members of Congress win something like 98% of the time. How do you square that with the 60% disapproval rating of Congress overall?

I wish the pundits would explain when presenting their poll data, but they never do. My working hypothesis is that the public's dissatisfaction is directed toward the other members of Congress, not so much one's own.