It's an odd thing to find humor in, Tom, and the knee-jerk impulse to try to build up Republicans by tearing down Democrats is, in this case, leading you directly to shooting yourself in the foot.

Democrats won Congress in 2006 by promising to kick Republican ass, and their low approval rating now is a direct result of failing to deliver on that promise.

That promise wouldn't have been attractive to the voters without the Republican record in office; it would've been a non-sequiter if Republicans hadn't "tarnished" their own "brand" so badly. Congress's low confidence rating has a direct causal relationship to Republican mal/misgovernance.

Or maybe a better term for it than "gallows humor" is "Pyrrhic humor". You (and the country) have paid a terrible price to get to the point where you can find humor in a low confidence rating for Congress.

So laugh it up, furball. You'll need to find humor anywhere you can between now and November.

But wait, there's more. I can understand the train of thought that leads you to unease about the military's confidence rating being so much higher than civilian institutions. But I think that you need to look at it in context of the question. It wasn't "which institution do you trust to be in charge", the question was actually rather open-ended, simply about "confidence". I'd interpet the question as asking whether I have confidence in each institution to do its own job, not to run things. My interpretation works for all institutions on the list, but yours (as I interpret it) isn't sensible to apply to a great many of them, for example the medical system.

So relax, it's a good thing that we can trust the military to do the job we deem appropriate for the military. I'd worry a lot more if we couldn't trust the military--that's when you have to worry about coups and the like.

However, I am a little bothered by TV news rating one point higher than newspapers. That is a bad sign.