If you follow me on twitter, you know that I’m plenty mad at Congress today. Mad, disillusioned, frustrated…you name it. And apparently, according to the handful of articles I read this morning, most Americans feel the way I do. In fact, guess who is now more popular than Congress. Nixon—during Watergate. That’s right. The American people were happier with Nixon during Watergate than they are with Congress right now. Go Congress.

So, clearly, I have all kinds of political angst about the whole thing (this is all in reference to the supercommittee’s failure to reach a compromise, in case you are really lost). But the real question is: what are we going to do? I mean, what can we do? Lots of flashy ideas come to mind. How about having a sit-in in the Capitol? Since, clearly, no one is using the chambers over there, maybe we could just set up our Occupy Congress tents in there. Everyone is always whining about how the OWS movements have no clear demands; what if we sat down and said we have a demand now; our demand is a compromise. And we’d be there until one was made. Or how about creating all-new supercommittee—one that’s secret and sequestered, so that no one knows which members of Congress are on it. Maybe that would help the members be less pinned-down by political pressures, help them stop thinking about elections and more about the people themselves? Or, how about an all-new Congress? An “Impeach Congress” movement with a new special election? Start all over. I normally don’t support this kind of thing, because I believe you need some people in government who have been there before and know how to work within the system (look how much trouble the Freshmen have caused), but in this case, since Congress isn’t doing anything at all… Okay, okay. Too much? Maybe so.

But, really, what are our real options? What can we do? Should we do something? Or is it okay to just let it pass? What do we really want? (I pause here to consider this.)

I’d like Congress to compromise. I’d like my Congresspeople to know that I want them to compromise. I’d like them to know that I am not an idiot, that I understand that in dire circumstances (like the ones we are in), certain things have to be sacrificed, and that said sacrificies need not be permanent—they could be measures to adjust and help the economy that could be reconsidered in a few years when things are a little less wretched. I’d like Congress to know that I am a whole lot more reasonable than they seem to think; that if they honestly think the American people are as stubborn and unwilling to make sacrifices and work with one another, they clearly haven’t been watching Americans for the past few years. But most of all, since Congress is obviously so concerned with elections only, I’d like Congress to know that I’m more likely to vote for them again if they come to an agreement than I am if they keep doing what they are doing now.

Maybe I’ll write a letter… if only I thought that would do something. But, really, is that the most I can do? I’m asking for real. It kind of seems like it is. So, seriously, what are we going to do? What can we do? I’m genuinely open to ideas—kind of like how I wish Congress was.

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In case you’re interested, here are the links to the articles I read this morning (note that I don’t necessarily agree with everything in these articles; they are just the things I read that helped shape my current view). Instead of just posting the links, I’ve included a quote from each article, and the link at the end of the quote:

But it also prompted wrenching questions about whether Congress can be trusted to do its job…The idea of the committee was, in part, to save Congress from itself…It was Congress lashing itself to the mast, like Odysseus, to resist the siren calls of lobbyists and special interest groups. But in the end, the ship went nowhere. “A Failure Is Absorbed With Disgust and Fear, but Little Surprise,” Michael Cooper, New York Times, 11/21/11

“There could be a bit of a silver lining,” said Rosanne Altshuler, an economist at Rutgers University who served on President George W. Bush’s 2005 tax reform panel. “It forces us to come to terms with cuts in areas that have been difficult to touch — the military and Medicare. We may not like how the cuts are going to be done, but we better start dealing with the fact that cuts are going to have to be made.” “For Deficit Panel, Failure Cuts Two Ways,” Binyamin Appelbaum and Annie Lowrey, New York Times, 11/21/11

[The supercommittee] was created to kick the can down the road. The only thing that mattered was that it come into existence, and it did. Its invention made increases in the debt ceiling possible through the end of President Obama’s term. “They didn’t fail – they succeeded in doing nothing,” John Podhoretz, New York Post, 11/22/11

By reminding Republicans of their antitax promises, [Norquist] has helped to expose the real reason for the super committee’s failure: the two parties disagree profoundly on a vision of government. Democrats don’t believe they need to do more than tinker around the edges of the entitlement state while raising taxes on the rich. Republicans think the growth of government is unsustainable and can’t be financed no matter how much taxes are raised. Sounds like we need an election. “Thank You, Grover Norquist,” Wall Street Journal, 11/22/11 (I couldn’t find the author’s name on the page…)

Budget deals get done because presidents prod, plead, cajole, demand and threaten. A few phone calls and tepid public statements do not count. It is the executive, not the legislature, that gives the budget process energy and direction. The supercommittee failed primarily because President Obama gave a shrug. “Obama Let the Supercommittee Fail,” Michael Gerson, Washington Post, 11/21/11

Things could still change after that—if the next president values defense spending more highly, he could work out changes to the sequester with the next congress at any time. Or maybe all involved will judge it best to let the cuts take effect as planned. However it goes, it’s not going to be something the two parties can hold off until after the election. They will need to make their priorities and proposals clear well before that, and these basic fiscal questions are going to be front and center throughout the election year. “The Sequester,” Yuval Levin, National Review Online, 11/21/11

And, of course, no list of links that I compiled would be complete without one by David Brooks. His post today is fascinating—about how the US now has two “minority” parties, two parties who act as though they are in the minority, and no strong political party to lead. Very hard to argue with this one.

In normal circumstances, minority parties suffer a series of electoral defeats and then they modernize. But in the era of the two moons, the parties enjoy periodic election victories they don’t deserve, which only re-enforce their worst habits. So it’s hard to see how we get out of this, unless some third force emerges, which wedges itself into one of the two parties, or unless we have a devastating fiscal crisis — a brutal cleansing flood, after which the sun will shine again. “The Two Moons,” David Brooks, New York Times, 11/21/11