The People Think They Are Smarter Than Congress

The People Think They Are Smarter Than Congress

One of William F. Buckley's more thoughtful comments is that he would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Boston phone book than the faculty of Harvard. It turns out that the population has looked at Congress, and reached a similar conclusion. From the February 11, 2009 Rasmussen Reports poll:

When it comes to the nation’s economic issues, 67% of U.S. voters have more confidence in their own judgment than they do in the average member of Congress.
Nineteen percent (19%) trust members of Congress more, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Fourteen percent (14%) aren’t sure.
Republicans and unaffiliated voters by double digits have more confidence in themselves than Democrats do, but even a majority of the party that controls Congress trust themselves more than the average legislator.
Forty-four percent (44%) voters also think a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress, but 37% disagree. Twenty percent (20%) are undecided.
The new Congress fares worse on this question that the previous Congress. Last October, just 33% said a randomly selected group of Americans would do a better job than the Congress then in session.

I've long believed that random selection of members of the legislature and Congress would be a better choice than the current process. Would randomly picked members be smarter than the crowd up there now? No, I don't think so. They might not even be as smart. But they certainly would not be as corrupted by the continual pursuit of campaign funds, outright bribes, and sex with pages--and that's the biggest problem we have now.

Congress (and it wasn't dramatically better when Republicans ran it) is primarily in the business of redistributing wealth from those who work to those who connive. For the most part, the redistribution of wealth that Congress causes is upwards, with the occasional bread crumb thrown to the poor to make a pretense of concern for the poor.