Ah.

Where to start.

Let's try "government."

If you are like me - and many of you are as we shall see in a moment - you don't have a lot of confidence in that necessary evil in our lives called "government."

And it's probably directly proportional to its proximity to us, meaning that the further away that element of government is, the less likely we are to respect it or have confidence in it..

Take the federal government.

Yeah. Please take it and do something constructive with is because to most of us, it is beyond hopeless. Beyond corrupt. Beyond accountable. Beyond anything we know or understand.

Poll after poll after poll after poll has shown how little Americans respect the federal government, most notably congress and the White House.

In the most recent Harris Poll, Congress - not George Bush - was at the bottom of the list of 16 surveyed institutions with a whopping 8 percent approval rate, down from 10 percent in 2006 and 2007. Only 8 respondents out of 100 surveyed agreed that they had a "great deal of confidence" in congress.

Eight percent!

That high?

And members of Congress are the ones - along with the media - criticizing Bush about his low approval rating which was, by the way, not great at 15 percent, but clearly higher than the clowns in the glass houses who were chucking rocks at Bush.

Leading the pack with the highest approval rating, as it has over the last several surveys, is the military, currently with a "great deal of confidence" approval rating of 51 percent, 3 percent higher than small business at 47 percent. a trend since January 2002.

A couple of institutions in our country must be really thankful that Congress' rating was so low, keeping them out of last place.

Guess who were the two next lest respected institutions?

Law firms and the press.

The top rating of law firms over the last seven Harris polls going back to January, 2002, has been a whopping 13 percent, consistently placing them among the least respected of all 16 surveyed institutions.

The press has done only slightly better with its most favorable rating being 16 percent in Jan, 2002, good enough for fourth from the bottom.

For the average schmo, like me, the change of having a positive impact on our federal government is about the same as planning a ski trip to Sugar Mountain in July.

Even if our congressman agreed with our issue, he would have to convince a majority of the remaining 434 to vote for his bill.

Then you have the House of Supreme and Exulted Lords, a.k.a. the Senate, which would also have to agree, and then you have the administration.

Odds?

You pick em.

We have a slightly better - but not much - chance of making an impact down in Columbia. But it would take a cohort of like-minded citizens, a few agreeable politicians, a lobbyist here or there, and some likely fund raising in order to get something through the Assembly prior to the return of Halley's Comet.

Local government?

Here is where we can, individually, make a difference.

They live where we live.

All of them.

They go to our churches, schools, and attend our ball games.

We see them on the street and can easily meet with them most any time.

And, unlike state and national elections, our vote really does matter because of the relatively small number of voters.

Honestly, my vote doesn't count much when 20 million others vote. It counts more when 3,000, or 1,500 or 800 of you vote.

While there are those who say that if you don't like your state or federal politician, vote him or her out, it's mostly just talk to make us feel good.

But at local level, and city, county and school board level ... yeah it makes sense.

Our vote matters.

But I wonder.

Those 8 percent who had a "great deal of confidence" in Congress.

What in the world were they thinking about?