Commentary/Editorial: Voter Backlash

Voter backlash against the majority party is a common phenomenon in American politics. It happened in 1980. It happened in 1992. It happened in 2008 and 2010, at least in the Massachusetts special election. Numerous commentators have dissected voter backlash, but I think they're missing a key component: voters presume that the government can (and will) fix the problems the country is facing.
In some cases, this presumption is correct. In the case of foreign policy decisions, financial decisions (spending, taxes), or moral decisions (e.g. the Watergate or Lewinsky Scandals), the government has the ability to fix the problems and failure to do so is rightly seen by the voters as a failure on the part of elected officials.
On the other hand, there are other times when the government faces voter backlash because the voters have unrealistic expectations of their government. In 2008, voters blamed the government for the state of the economy (and expected them to fix it immediately), even though the government was only partially to blame (and thus only partially could fix it, and even then not immediately).
Now, the backlash seen in the 2010 special election is probably a mix of both. On the one hand, voters rightfully recognized that the Democrats in Congress were not doing a good job listening to their constituents and addressing the issues that government could fix. On the other hand, voters also expected too much from the government. They are looking to government to fix all of society's ills.
This trend, that Americans in general are becoming too dependent on their government, concerns me. If we are looking to government to solve our problems, then we are going to be sorely disappointed because the most significant problems facing this country are not governmental; they are moral. And the government cannot fix a moral problem like this, only God can.
I know that many will probably object that we as Americans have "been there, done that" with Christianity. If by Christianity, they mean the social religion where people put on their Christianity along with their church clothes, only to drop it just as fast, then, yes, America has already tried it and failed. I am not saying we need to return to a society where we are Christian on the outside but non-Christian on the inside. America's moral problems, from fraudulent accounting to teenagers making self-destructive choices, cannot be fixed by a veneer of Christianity. (After all, we had those same problems even we had the appearance of being a "Christian society.") Instead, we as Americans need to turn to Jesus Christ in a way that we never have as a society: wholeheartedly and deeply. Unless many Americans surrender their hearts to Christ and allow Him to change them from the inside out, I think we will continue to face the same challenges and continually find ourselves disappointed when the circumstances do not improve as we would like.
So, as the 2010 election cycle swings into gear, I hope that the voting public tempers its expectations of what government can and cannot do. Government cannot fix many of the problems of America. It certainly can make many things worse. (That is why I would like to see a more balanced power structure in Congress. Having one party in control has not worked well in our country's history.) Ultimately, the problems at the core of American society can be fixed only at the altar, not at the voting booth.