CONGRESS’S APPROVAL RATE: Still lower than Bush’s. And disapproval is higher.

I think there’s an overall loss of faith in America’s political class, which seems to me to be largely warranted.

UPDATE: Don Surber looks on the bright side: “But Congress is doing better than a year ago when the spread was 27-65. At this rate, Congress will go from hated to just disliked by 2009.” Yay, team!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Dems will be touting this AP poll, which shows Congress at a sky-high forty percent approval! But I don’t think that undercuts my thesis. When approval is well below 50% — and, as Surber notes, disapproval is 57% — we’re talking about a slightly lower level of public contempt, not actual approval.

MORE: Bob Krumm looks at another poll and comments: “When two of the top three vote getters in a presidential poll are undeclared candidates who have both been out of politics for half a decade, I’d say he’s right.”

STILL MORE: The Influence Peddler notes: “approval ratings under 50% are absolutely the norm, and under 40% aren’t especially unusual.”

Yes, as I say there’s a long-running problem with America’s political class, that’s being obscured by today’s partisan bitchfest.

FINALLY: More fun with polls from Tom Elia. And Jay Reding observes: “Attributing this to a general loss of faith in America’s political class is right. The President is isolated and has become almost a Nixonian figure. Nancy Pelosi is trying to pretend that she’s the President and Rep. Tom Lantos is arguing that the Democrats have their own foreign policy, the Constitution be damned. The basic problems that affect most Americans — the economy, health care, education, all of them go without any real solutions from Washington.”