Number of the Day

82%: The percentage of respondents in the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll who currently "disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job—the most since The Times first began asking the question in 1977, and even more than after another political stalemate led to a shutdown of the federal government in 1995."

More than four out of five people surveyed said that the recent debt-ceiling debate was more about gaining political advantage than about doing what is best for the country. Nearly three-quarters said that the debate had harmed the image of the United States in the world.

Republicans in Congress shoulder more of the blame for the difficulties in reaching a debt-ceiling agreement than President Obama and the Democrats, the poll found.

The Republicans compromised too little, a majority of those polled said. All told, 72 percent disapproved of the way Republicans in Congress handled the negotiations, while 66 percent disapproved of the way Democrats in Congress handled negotiations.

The public was more evenly divided about how Mr. Obama handled the debt ceiling negotiations: 47 percent disapproved and 46 percent approved.

The public’s opinion of the Tea Party movement has soured in the wake of the debt-ceiling debate. The Tea Party is now viewed unfavorably by 40 percent of the public and favorably by just 20 percent, according to the poll. [...]

"I'm real disappointed in Congress," Ron Raggio, 54, a florist from Vicksburg, Miss., said in a follow-up interview. "They can't sit down and agree about what's best for America. It's all politics."

It grieves me that politics has become a dirty word, as a result of the petty gamespersonship played in the Beltway that prioritizes winning over decency.

But not as much as it grieves me that my government is functional garbage.

Mainly because I know that, although seeing the profound brokenness of my government beckons and challenges me to fight even harder for what I believe through ever more creative channels, that brokenness inspires in most people, and understandably so, crushing feelings of impotency and, eventually, indifference.