Why do presidents get blame....and not congress?

[truthspeak]

This has been one of the most dysfunctional and ineffective congresses in history. One side are maniacal obstructionists and the other are a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off. Yet the president gets all the blame dealing with all this shit.

Obama needs to just run against the whole damn congress.

[bigwillq]

1. Congress did get blamed

On Nov. 2

[Autumn]

2. +1

[myrna minx]

3. +1

[Clio the Leo]

10. lol not from us they didn't.....

.... but Congress doesn't NEED to get blamed .... they need to be CALLED.

[bigwillq]

11. Recalled, maybe.

yea, all those phone calls. They're really listening to us. :eyes:

[Ozymanithrax]

4. This may have something to do with it.

But, really, we are institutionalized to give credit and place blame on the guy at the top.

[bigwillq]

5. Good post.

I agree with your text.:thumbsup:

[frugal99]

6. Technically, polls always show Congress with the Lower Approval Ratings than Presidents

But another poll showed that people always in the end blame presidents for failings...i think its because the President is the face of the government...the leader. So like military or sports when something goes bad you always blame the general/coach

[FrenchieCat]

7. That's what the Republicans are banking on.........

[MrsCorleone]

9. +1

[DemocratSinceBirth]

14. Ding, Ding, Ding. We Have A Winner

Because it'e easier to replace the coach than the whole team or to replace the president than the whole Congress...

[quakerboy]

8. Why do presidents get the credit, and not congress?

It cuts both ways. I have as yet to hear anyone singing the praises of FDR's congress. Do we blame the crash of 08 on the democratic congress? Do we give Clinton's repub congress credit for the surpluses?


I also think you are being a bit to nonspecific. It was not congress. It was the senate. The congressional democrats may have paid the price, but it was the senate where the biggest part of the problem lay.

[truthspeak]

13. True the Senate deserves more blame

but this recent drama shows that the House can be dysfunctional too.

[quakerboy]

19. We will see.

I am not sure that I agree with that assessment. I will wait and see what actually passes or does not before I judge their functionality, as it seems to me much of what we see is purely theater.

[PVnRT]

12. The same reason that coaches get fired when a team doesn't do well

Besides, the president's approval numbers are far, far higher than Congress', which is nearly always the case. The one exception I can think of occurred towards the end of Bush's second term.

[otohara]

15. Oh Maybe Because Obama Campaigned On Ending These

over and over again.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

16. because all of us vote for the president. whereas we only vote for

2/50 senators and 1/435 seats in the house

[ShadowLiberal]

17. Because presidents stopped sitting back and just signing/vetoing bills and started pushing for them

Presidents used to not even have an agenda when they campaigned, they didn't used to promise to pass any legislation. I think it wasn't until Theodore Roosevelt (I could be wrong though) that a president actually thought up of a policy agenda that they promised to propose to congress and get them to pass it/vote on it.

Heck, back when Washington was president he only vetoed two bills, both because he thought they were unconstitutional.

It wasn't even until Andrew Jackson that we had a president who vetoed a bill for a reason other than believing it's unconstitutional (it was the bank bill Jackson vetoed because he didn't like it, that's the first bill to get vetoed just because a president didn't like it).

[madamesilverspurs]

18. Scapegoating.

For the Republicans, Barack HUSSEIN Obama is the scapegoat dreams are made of. And not just because of his middle name. What's especially repulsive, though, is all the Democrats who are rushing to assist in the sliming of this president, and many of them, it seems, are in the Congress.

=

[Raine]

20. Because that's "where the buck stops"

seriously Truman promoted that and now it's the way people feel about the office.

[Pistarkle]

21. I agree with you 100%

I hate the thought of having to compromise on the tax cuts, but no compromise is only in your corner when YOU have the upper hand. Right now the Republicans HAVE the upper hand – more than enough “no” votes in the Senate to keep tax cuts for the wealthy in ANY compromise. If Democratic candidates campaigned on tax cuts for the wealthy during the 2010 Campaign as the President suggested, perhaps 90% rather than 40% of eligible voters would have voted in the midterms and the Democrats would have the upper hand regarding the tax cut controversy, but that’s past history.

Because of the midterm results, Republicans will be in charge of the House and the 60 vote filibuster-proof Senate on the side of Democrats will be out the door come January 1st. At least now a compromise will benefit the middle class, the poor, and the unemployed and small businesses. The President HAD TO FIGHT for the extension of unemployment benefits, tax cuts for the middle class, payroll tax cuts, and incentives for small businesses to create jobs. The Republicans ONLY wanted tax cuts for the wealthy. It’s not the best of both worlds, but it’s better than nothing at all. After January 1st when the Republicans are in charge of the House, you can be guaranteed that those benefits will be ‘gone with the wind’.

WE criticized the President and Democrats when we didn’t get the public option but WE didn’t fight for it. We let the Tea Party and health insurance industry do ALL of the squawking and we didn’t start raising Cain until after the fact. WE must deliver the upper hand. WE must speak out in ONE voice. WE must shame the Republicans into ending those tax cuts THROUGHOUT the next two years. WE must hold local rallies. WE must fight for our rights in local AND national newspapers, internet, radio and media outlets. WE must email, fax and call Republican Congressional offices EVERY DAY. We must let Tea Party-backed Republicans know that if they continue to fight for the wealthy and ignore the middle class, the poor and the unemployed, WE WILL vote them out in 2012 and WE must mean it!

[rasputin1952]

22. It is the mindset of people to blame the highest person they can...

when things go awry; but there are a lot of reasons why we're in the situation we are in...the most obvious being the remarkable ignorance of the political process. Coming in a close second is the fact that in this country, people are essentially lazy and don't get out and vote.

Congress is responsible for legislation, if they fail at legislating the president can do little under the Constitution. Fortunately, we do not have a "king/queen" that has unlimited power to decree what will become the law of the land. However, when congress fails, the country fails and people look for a scape goat, the most obvious being the president.

Ignorance plays a large part in the equation; people have historically voted against their self interests and the interests of the nation in the hopes something will be done, most often, nothing gets done. Take the GOP position on abortion; every election cycle brings about the conservative view that babies are being murdered in vast numbers across the nation, by the time they done with the descriptions, one would think that we'd be slipping on the entrails of the unborn as soon as we walked out the door, the reality is far different and the history of abortion is virtually unknown, but that doesn't stop the single issue voters from coming out in droves to vote, "against abortion". Point of fact, the minute the situation has been used to the advantage of the conservatives and they get voted in, they instantaneously forget about abortion. The entire situation was set up to get votes, nothing else. They are not about to give up this wedge issue to gain seats, as was proven under bush w/an R congress, an R president and a compliant USSC. With all of that, nary a peep about banning abortion via legislation or a Constitutional amendment...until the next cycle. The amazing thing is, people still vote for what are essentially charlatans using people to gain their votes.

The laziness of the American voter is legendary. those of us who vote every election are frustrated by those who, "can't find the time", to vote. This past election is a perfect example of what can happen when people sit out an election, (I don't care of R's sit out an election, it's the D's that bother me). I have found that the loudest complainers are those who don't vote, and from my perspective, once I asked if they voted, (not who they voted for), and I hear, "I didn't vote", I simply tell them that as far as I'm concerned, they gave up their right to complain, at least to me, (caveat: back in my drinking days, this would be a great way to start a bar fight!)

There is another part of the equation as well, I read tons of stuff on DU, some I agree with, some I don't. What I do find though is that a lot of people post on DU, but do not contact their congresscritters about their concerns, and that is a serious problem. While I certainly agree that people have the right to post their views here, (within the rules set forth by the Admins), I find it disparaging that many people don't take the logical step in contacting the very people that are actually legislating, (or lack thereof). I have an R Senator, Johanns (NE), a half-assed D Senator, Ben Nelson and an R Representative, Adrian Smith, (3rd Dist). They hear from me on a near constant basis and I pull no punches. I give credit where credit is do, and condemnation when condemnation is due. I've been told that calling Johanns an asshole will not gain me any friends, but he is an asshole, so he gets a ration of crap from me. Smith gets a look if indignation when I go to a Town Hall meeting as he knows he's going to get called out when he sees me. (I used to have Fortenberry, who is the epitome of an asshole, but I moved and my contact with him is minimal. I was on Nelson's re-election team, but since he went back to the Senate, he's proven to be a complete failure in my view, and I let him know he's little more than slug on many issues. My pint is, I work hard to make sure these people are accountable for their actions...(caveat: I know for a fact many DU'ers do the same thing, but we should all be smacking these goomers upside the head).

After all of this PO get the blame because people need to blame someone for their misery, and through a series of errors and ignorance, add a hefty dose of apathy, the recipe for disaster is guaranteed to bring about said disaster. Rather than blame ourselves, we blame the guy in charge...it's almost hardwired into our psyches.

[truthspeak]

23. Great points...

...especially the part about voters complaining, yet they intentionally didn't vote. How can you intentionally cut off your nose...then cry and blame others about it later?

[rasputin1952]

24. Hardwired defense by individuals that refuse to look inside themselves...

I think the one person it is most difficult to look at, is ourselves, we tend to find failure more often than not, and that is painful, so we blame others for our own shortcomings.

So easy to judge others, but we rarely judge ourselves...we rationalize our own compliance away.

[Hippo_Tron]

25. Congressional leaders can and do get blamed at times

People don't assign blame to 535 people because those 535 people have extremely varying degrees of influence over the process and varying opinions on policy.

But leaders like Newt Gingrich can end up being blamed just as the POTUS can.