The story is a straight-up report of a series of Gallup polls which since 2002 have showed a steadily decreasing level of satisfaction with American governance. More people are becoming less satisfied, and from the graph it's evident that the rate of dissatisfaction is increasing. Not much information as to why - perhaps it reflects a general growing level of dissatisfaction, what with the war, loss of good jobs, stagnant wages, rising health care, etc. Or perhaps since Katrina it's becoming more obvious to people that the government just doesn't give much of a damn about them.

What I find difficult to believe is that 60% of Republicans are satisfied with the way this country is governed. As a former Republican--before neo cons kidnapped the party--I am one of those exceedlingly dissatisfied with the wretched misgovernment of this country. The worst administration is US history!

As journalism consumers, we must be very wary of "Gallup Polls". Left unanswered in this article are many important statistical questions: how many of the 1010 respondents were Democrats? Was it 1009 Republicans and 1 Democrat? Or vice versa? What precisely were the questions? What was the age and demographic distribution? Absent this information, the journalistic quality of the piece is very low.

Per se, as a report of a survey result, it is functional journalism. Since polls are now used to manipulate rather than provide information, the question is a perfect red herring ripe for use as propaganda. While it presents the "big picture" of dissatisfaction, which in this case merely reflects intuition, it provides no details of causation. There are some very dangerous omissions as a result of such a generic question. For example, in the reported results there is an implication of a "do nothing" governance since things are not changing which ignores, for example, the obstructionism embedded in the 60 vote requirement in the Senate. Therefore logical inferences are implied that Democrats are in the majority ergo they are the ... More »

It's hard to argue with well thought out polls.