Opinion: Now hiring: 450+ lawmakers, no experience necessary

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A new poll by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News posed this question to 1,000 randomly chosen adults: If you had to choose between a congressional candidate who has spent more than 10 years in office and one who had never run for anything before, who’d get your vote? Nearly half of the registered voters in the survey -- 48% to be exact -- said they’d take the novice. Only 23% went with the experienced candidate. The rest were divided between ‘it depends,’ ‘not sure’ and ‘neither.’

That’s a remarkable repudiation of the value of experience in politics, and it reflects the widespread sense that lawmakers are out of touch. That’s ironic, given how poll driven lawmakers are these days. They’re acutely aware of the wishes of their constituents. But President Obama and the Democratic leadership made a political blunder when they devoted months of Congress’ time to healthcare reform -- and worse, a bill that most voters disliked -- instead of looking for additional ways to turn the economy around.

The message to many voters was that Democrats weren’t paying attention to the real problem. That may be why 90% of the registered voters polled said that this Congress, whose legislative output was as weighty and significant as it was contentious, was merely average (30%), below average (25%) or one of the worst in history (35%).

Yet it would be a mistake to view the anti-Washington-insider sentiment in partisan terms. The survey found that sentiments about the Republican Party were about as negative as those for Democrats, and as many wanted Democrats to retain control of Congress as favored a GOP takeover. And respondents were almost evenly split between wanting the government to do more to solve problems and wanting it to cut back.

Two other intriguing data points from the poll:

57% of the registered voters polled said they’d rather vote for a candidate who would stick to his or her position on an issue rather than compromising on a bill, compared to 34% who preferred a candidate who would ‘make compromises to gain consensus.’ That’s a recipe for even more gear-grinding in Washington, where filibusters and party-line votes have become routine.

52% said their representative in Congress was ‘part of the solution,’ compared to 35% who considered their representative ‘part of the problem.’ Perhaps incumbents have a flicker of hope after all.

-- Jon Healey