Hard to believe you keep getting away with this specious comparison between Congress and Bush. We all remember how Democrats created the expectation in 2006 that they'd "stop" Bush, or at least put him back on the leash; and they failed miserably. Congress's low approval rating is a reflection and consequence of Bush's historically low approval rating. It wouldn't be that low without Bush, and it won't remain that low when Bush leaves office. You're just blowing smoke with this one.

That got me to thinking in Turtledove mode...what if Congress had effectively opposed Bush the last couple of years? This year's election would have turned out differently, no doubt about it. If they'd succeeded in starting a withdrawal from Iraq they'd have deprived Obama of a signature issue that helped him early in the campaign. And if they'd heeded the warnings earlier about the economy, Republicans wouldn't have looked so bad on the economy, even if it had been a Democratic Congress that fixed things. Bottom line, this election would probably not have been such a decisive repudiation of Republicans and Republicanism because Democrats would have already started in on cleaning up the mess. Things had to be allowed to get worse before they could get better.

Are Pelosi and Reid so Machiavellian that they pulled their punches to lay the groundwork for the 2008 election?