[TangoTrotFox]

Your statement seems unfair. The people elected in democracies are not somehow uniquely benevolent and socially driven. They, at least in rolling with your worldview, once again will promote their own interests first. The election aspect changes very little. Our electorate is mostly poorly informed and easily manipulated. Try answering any question by asking 130 million people, of no qualification, after exposing them to months of emotionally charged misinformation, mud slinging, and FUD -- all carried out by the best manipulators money can buy. The answers you're going to get explain how we can have a 15% approval rating for the congress that we put into office.

That said even though democracy is quite an awful system, it's probably the least awful of the alternatives. We, the people, are very unlikely to meaningfully change anything in any given election - but that power is, at least technically, there. Whereas if you have an awful monarch/dictator/life serving republic/etc then your only option is a bit messier.

[snarfybarfy]

I love the 'least awful type of government' line of reasoning.

It sounds like we tried 100s of different things since we got rid of royality and after a lots experiments 'representative' democracy was proven best.

I think it's more the case of the new royality finding it quite comfortable and this is one of the standard FUD lines we get.

[genericid]

Democracy is not a system, it's a principle. The principle that the people rules. Today's representative democracies apply that principle very imperfectly.

The rulers don't have to be particularily benevolent to promote the people's interests if their interests and the people's interests are the same.

[setr]

> The answers you're going to get explain how we can have a 15% approval rating for the congress that we put into office.

If the manipulation is completely and totally successful, then shouldn't they be able to maintain a higher approval rating than just 15%?

[TangoTrotFox]

After elections individual congressmen become completely invisible to nearly all of the voting public. How many voters could tell you just 5 things, positive or negative, that their congressman did during their last term? People who know nothing about what they're voting on don't suddenly become actively involved after voting.

The only reason people care about the president is because he maintains a high visibility throughout his term. Even then it's very superficial. I'd be extremely surprised if the average voter could list 5 actual effected policy decisions of Obama that they liked/disliked. Yet they will love or loath him in spite of the lack of that knowledge. The various videos demonstrating this effect are my favorite. Individuals will be surveyed on what they think of described "Obama" policies, which are actually Trump policies - or vice versa. Their view on the policy invariably has little to nothing to do with the actual policy, and everything to do with the name attached to it.

[setr]

So it seems trivial to then maintain high approval ratings during the term (no one knows what you’re really up to, before during and after the term)

Presidency sees a lot of marketing from each side, so high approval ratings might be more difficult to maintain, but congress should be far less of a battleground.

If you’re correct, then theres no reason for them to have 15% approval except out of sheer laziness; just as no one questions them during the election process, no one should be questioning during the term too

[dragonwriter]

Individual members of Congress have high approval readings in their districts, usually. Congress as an institution has a low approval rating, because people hate the 532 members they don't get to vote for, not the three that they do, in part because each member blames results unpopular in their district on the rest of Congress.