The Presidential candidates are a different story, but most polls have suggested that Americans like their elected officials, we just don't like the other guy's elected officials. Gerrymandering creates a situation where the congressional representatives are going to deviate from the norm due to us radicalizing most districts. It is rather sad after nearly 240 years we haven't come up with something better.
As to the presidential candidates, I am not at all down on them. Certainly I don't like nearly all of them, but the field is incredibly diverse. If one cannot find someone they like out of this group I'm not sure what they are looking for. We have hard right, mainstream right, neo-libertarian, moderate right, moderate left, mainstream left and far left. The only thing that could have made it better would have been Huntsman.
1776 has some lyrics, copied below, that are derived from a real song of the revolutionary era. I don't think people ever appreciate politicians in the era they live in. Even Washington had to have numerous critics. The country was broke, his closest advisers were badly split, we had a rebellion and lost 600 soldiers to Natives in a battle in Ohio. As personally popular as Washington was, there had to be a lot of people wondering what on earth he was up to. Lincoln was painfully close to losing in 64. The Brits wasted little time to get rid of Churchill. Politicians just aren't liked in their own time.
I do believe you've laid a curse on North America
A curse that we here now rehearse in Philadelphia
A second flood,
A simple famine
plagues of locusts everywhere
or a cataclysmic earthquake
I'd accept with some despair
but no you send us congress
good God sir was that fair?
