US Federal Government Shutdown

[CountArach]

But the country that has repeatedly given Congress with a 10% approval rating a generous 90% incumbent rate, every two years, decade after decade has no sympathy for me.

That is because, by and large, people do in fact like their own congressperson:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/162362/am...sentative.aspx

I am never surprised by the low ratings that 'Congress' gets in polls. Take the current Republican-controlled Congress at any point. If you asked the average Democrat if they approved or disapproved then, from a purely partisan standpoint, most of them will say disapprove because they don't think it is progressive enough. So that is a substantial portion of the population against you already. Then you consider those who are to the right of the average Republican and they will also disapprove. Then you have Republicans who will disapprove because they think that Congress hasn't pushed its agenda hard enough. Then there are Republicans who will disapprove because they think there are too many Democrats or they perceive Democrats as standing in the way of an agenda. Not only that but it is a fairly common thing for the media to create narratives that focus primarily on conflict, so what is presented is a picture of an ineffective institution (which, by all accounts, is not too inaccurate), which is constantly bickering and this will throw further people offside. So after all this it would be astonishing if they could ever register higher than 20% of the country, except at times of crisis (I recall that approval was high post-9/11 and at the outset of the Iraq War, as was Presidential approval).

Anyway that's neither here nor there, just a random sidenote.