With the change mantra now being chanted by both presidential candidates there is one poll -- it's all about voters' desire for change -- that, surprisingly, has been overlooked throughout the campaign.  The President's dismal 25% approval rating is made to look pretty strong when compared with the 9% approval rating that Congress gets in the same polls. 

John McCain admits that he is running against George W. Bush as well as Barack H. Obama, but the latter does not suffer much as a result of the failed two-year congressional legacy of Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and Charles Rangel nor the rest of the ongoing ultra-partisan staleness and bitterness of such political luminaries as Senators Reed, Dodd, Kerry, Schumer and, when he is present to vote, Obama himself.

Regardless of which candidate is elected President it is the Congress that will propose nearly all of the legislation that might promote the economic, security and social change that voters crave.  So if 91% of us are so unhappy with our legislators' performance and attitude why should more than 50% of us pull the levers that will return congressional incumbents to their seats in the House and Senate?

President Bush was re-elected because he accomplished Job #1, as demanded by the events of his first term.  The fact that our homeland security has not been seriously breached during his post-9/11 watch is, assumedly, the reason that his approval rating is so much better than that of the Congress.

By the same token, for legislators to be rated as 9% successful means that they have failed to accomplish every job they undertook with the possible exception of staying in regular contact with their constituents by mail through overuse of their franking privilege (free postage) which allows them to spin their "accomplishments" early and often, bolstering future prospects while saving on re-election campaign expenses.

At this late stage of the race for the White House nearly everyone has decided the ticket he or she will support.  More than ever before it is quite apparent how passionate the electorate is, in this cycle, about their candidate's perceived ability to affect change.

But where is the passion for our nation's treasured Constitution?  What about its core theme -- that there shall be checks and balances on each of the three branches of our federal government so that neither the President nor Congress nor the Judiciary ever has enough power to dictate over the other branches or, more importantly, the citizens that they represent?

While a new kind of leadership may be required to correct the national perception that 75% of what our President is doing is ineffective, one thing we know for sure is that the people who make up our corrupt, partisan, do-nothing Congress are incapable of fulfilling our expectations.

If we really desire change it must come from the bottom up, not from the top down.  We need to elect new legislators and hold them accountable so that they, in turn, will hold the new President accountable for fulfilling the promises on which he has campaigned. 

That prospect seems highly unlikely, regardless of our choice for President, with a congress that gets it right only 9% of the time -- by your estimate.

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