I agree with much of this although I wouldn't call myself politically neutral. Calling spades spades makes life a lot easier, though. I disagree fundamentally on congress as it's toxic and only the players can be held responsible. If they're not, then we're in more trouble than I or anyone else wants to believe...
****.
Here's how I look at things. You have groups of do gooders who believe their own ****. Paul Ryan immediately comes to mind. They're doing what they think is best, regardless of how boneheaded it is. Solar is about as dumb of an idea you can come up with, but they honestly believe they're doing good for the world. Good on em for that.
Then you have the pragmatists who see the posturing and b.s. and have to keep their uninformed constituency content, even though they allegedly were voted in to study issues and make the best decisions. Allegedly. So they wade through the structure and realize they have to give things up they don't like. But a little compromise is a good thing.
Then you have the power structure who's in high agreement on what needs to be done. Look at the setup over the last 1.5 years and tell me they didn't change things. Capital gains rates went from a 15% cap with a ****ton of deductions to 23.something with phased out deductions. FICA taxes were dropped meaninglessly, but hurt when raised as it always does. Now there's real pressure to finally tell the baby boomers that they can no longer look down their noses at the hard working young generation supporting them and will have to take some austerity too. They hold all the money anyway, which is probably why we couldn't ever change it yet.
And we had Bush with the spine to say in his specially dumb way "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,". There's no easy way to explain a simple concept to people about backstopping banking without pissing them off, so Bush manned up and put it bluntly, then saved us. Listen to the libs howling right now over Dow 15,000, which is a product of Bush's TARP and his Bernanke appointment, and Obama's spending spree.
And now we have amnesty with Obama telling us to thank Bush for ushering it in. And then we have HillaryCare set up in a couple years. And now we have whispers of Japan rebuilding their own protections. And gas prices are under serious pressure lower.
Politics under Obama's reign have made huge strides, even if we won't realize it en masse for another decade.