Stop poxing both houses

This kind of "pox on both your houses" thing drives me nuts:

Independents and Democrats at the Cocoa Beach Pier on Wednesday were more welcoming. They said an outsider candidacy by Mr. Crist might give Floridians a way to protest partisan politics. “People are upset with the whole system, and we need more than two parties,” said David Steranko, 39, a registered independent and Internet marketer of vacation packages. “I would really like to see our government stop bickering so much and work on our problems more.”

Look, what people are arguing about within the government is how to go about solving our problems. The endless debate on healthcare reform? That was because Democrats had a proposal to solve the problem of lots of Americans being uninsured, and Republicans thought that the Democrats' plan either wouldn't solve that problem, or would make other problems, like the deficit worse, or were playing for partisan advantage. With financial reform, Democrats perceive a problem (periodic crashes of the economy brought on by Wall Street shenanigans), and are trying to correct it with a financial reform bill. Republicans are fighting the bill, because they either think that it won't solve the problem, or because they'd like to hand Dems a loss. With both of these situations, Democrats (and some Republicans) are actively trying to solve problems - but lots of Republicans are gumming up the works to score political points.

Imagine that, at Mr. Steranko's internet vacation marketing company, he saw that there was a problem (too few people buying vacations), and he had a solution to it, but somebody else at the company spent months blocking his solution because they want Steranko to fail so they could have his job. I don't think that he would say that the right thing to do would be to fire Steranko and his antagonist, and bring in somebody else, because "there was too much bickering, and a third party should just solve the problem."