10 August 2012

Hate Congress / Love Your Congressperson

Americans hate Congress (approval ratings hit 11% this summer but have now risen to 17%) but love their congressperson. The average margin of victory for congressional elections is 33%, which works out to about a 2 to 1 drubbing.

It could be that we Americans are schizophrenic or it could be that we still haven't figured out the difference between choosing great parts and creating a great system. Which makes us little different from the representatives we elect.

People love to rant about how awful are members of congress but the fact that when they have a chance they vote them in by a 2 to 1 margin confirms to me that our representatives are generally bright, personable, and community-minded. More so than the rest of us.

In the future, when systems thinking is as common as pragmatic thinking is today, they'll look at things like this, financial crises, and climate change and ask, "Did they actually need more clues to suggest to them that they needed a better appreciation of systems? What were they thinking?"

And then some sage person will remind the kids, "It wasn't what they were thinking. It was how they were thinking."

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