BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The death of the super committee on deficit reduction was so painful to watch.

It didn’t even get a decent funeral. But then it didn’t deserve one. Its life was ill begotten and misspent.

The eulogies were a mix of  ‘I told you so’s’ by people and press who told us nothing, and politicians and interest groups pointing the finger of blame at each other—back and forth between conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans, Senators and House members, Congress and the President (how does the Supreme Court always escape blame?), tea partiers and occupiers and on and on.

Nobody apologized for the failure.

The combatants remain defiant. They were still harping at each other the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  Some seem to be under the influence of an elixir that has them hallucinating about the next election. They believe if they put off governing for another year, the American people will reward them by electing more politicians of their ilk. They could then, beginning in 2013, impose their political will on the country without any of this nettlesome bickering standing in their way today.

It is incomprehensible that reasonable men and women would hold the country hostage waiting for yet another “corrective” election what the Founding Fathers detested and rarely, if ever is realized in the politics of a democratic-republic–absolute power.

But while our leaders put off governing for another year, millions of their fellow countrymen suffer the consequences of their brinkmanship, watching their retirement savings drain away or their job prospects disappear or their home mortgages go into default, or their buying power dissolve, or watching small businesses left in limbo, unable to invest or hire. It is the political version acceptable collateral damage in wartime—a lousy calculus.

There are a good many perspectives from which to view political paralysis understand it and try to find solutions for crises we have let grow from simple problems.

One is the public’s perception of Congress. The American people, according to survey data, are fed up with, and maybe giving up on, this principle institution of government.

The opinion polls give Congress its lowest approval ratings in history.  But what may be more relevant is what lies beneath the survey responses. In our Congressional Institute book, Surviving Inside Congress, for congressional staff, we have a chapter on public opinion and public judgment. Pubic opinion, calculated in polling, is a snapshot of where opinion is on any given day. Public judgments, which evolve from public opinion, run far deeper, and are much more stable. They reflect an opinion that has transformed itself over time into a core belief.

Public judgment of Congress may now be transcending partisan politics and the normal negativity associated with politicians and government. The public may be moving on, from a public opinion about politicians to a public judgment, an abiding doubt about the institution itself and whether the greatest deliberative body in the history of the world may be permanently impaired. If we had a public plebiscite on disbanding Congress it would probably pass.

A congress, which is by Meriam-Webster’s definition, an assembly of divergent interests, must, in the end act as one assembly committed to the common good. A congress is supposed to homogenize the interests of individuals, caucuses and coalitions, political parties, ideological factions, single and multiple-interest groups, and very diverse constituencies, into the national interest, into a consensus that can be molded into public policy and governmental action. The factions that make up the congress, any congress, must ultimately dissolve into the whole, not the other way around. The congress must not become subordinate to the factions; the factions must become subordinate to the congress, in order for government to function.

The civics book descriptions and the historical perceptions of what Congress is and what it is supposed to do have been separated from reality and it has taken a toll on the public’s core confidence in their system of government.

Those who think the crisis in public confidence is just about the predictable dissatisfaction with the exercise of ideological and partisan differences may be engaging in intellectual arrogance and political naïveté. Most Americans are neither ideologically rigid nor puritanically partisan. To them, this may be about the very nature of our governance; how we make decisions as a people and whether we are going to come together or be torn apart.

I think many people suspect that the super committee could have succeeded right up to the weekend before it died. It was all there, the numbers, the cuts and revenues, the reforms of taxes and entitlements, and the room to compromise. It was all within reach. We have known that since last summer when President Obama and Speaker Boehner came within a hair of a grand bargain to restore us to economic stability and fiscal sanity.

What was missing was the concept of congress, the basic commitment of enough Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, to act as an assembly of individuals willing to risk their careers for the common good and the national interest.

If our leaders don’t restore the U.S. Congress to a congress of good people with common purpose, you can forget about resolving the challenges of budgets, deficits, debt, immigration, energy independence, clean air, safe drinking water, tax reform, health care, roads, rails and airways, privacy, retirement security, fair trade and crime.

Solutions to those problems, like those people living on the edge today, are going to be just more collateral damage while we wait for that elusive electoral mandate to end all mandates, that last great American political campaign to finally chart the ________(fill in the blank with liberal or conservative or Republican or Democratic) course of the country into the next millennium.

If, indeed, there is little will to govern between now and November of 2012, public opinion may well evolve into a lasting, deeply rooted public judgment that forces the next generation of elected representatives and the next President to face an even greater challenge: The very survival of our system of politics and government and the institutions that serve it.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.