Politics in the United States have always been a messy business; the recent government shutdown is no exception. When the clock struck midnight at the start of the new fiscal year, every politician and politician pundit that could get in front of a microphone proceeded to scream, shout and cast as much blame for the shutdown as they could on their political enemies. The Republican Party blamed President Obama and his liberal horde for trying to shove health care down our throats, while the Democratic Party blamed the likes of Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and their cohort of gun-loving tea-partiers.

However if you really want to know who is to blame for the recent government shutdown, you need only look in a mirror.

The best and worst thing about representative government in America is that it does just that: represent the people. On one hand it allows for the American public to decide who they want to voice their collective opinions in Washington D.C. On the other hand it allows the rash and reactionary nature of the American public to decide how the government should run (for at least the next two years), and that is kind of scary.

We cheered and patted ourselves on the back when we elected President Obama in 2008, but when he started to advocate health care reform, we all reacted in horror. Then two years later we turned around and celebrated again when we elected a predominantly Tea Party Congress, but once again the American people were horrified when they allowed the government to be shut down.

The ugly truth of the matter is that all of these politicians went to Washington and did exactly what they said they would do when they were running for office. We elected Democrats solely on their willingness to defend Obamacare, and we elected Republicans whose sole platform was to destroy it. Yet the American people wonder and complain why nothing gets done in Congress.

According to the latest polling data, Congress has around a 9.6 percent approval rating and the president sits at 44.5 percent a historic low. These numbers actually have very little to do with the job that Congress and the president are doing, but more about our unrealistic expectations. We elected two groups of people that maintain religious adherence to polar opposite sides of the political spectrum and yet we expect them to come to a happy compromise. Then when our senators and congressmen actually represent the views they were elected to represent, the American public casts blame and calls the system broken because it is unable to compromise.

The debt ceiling crisis illustrated a failure in American democracy; however, the blame for that failure can only be placed on the American people. The congressional approval rating might be 9.6 percent, but I put the approval rating for the American people way below that. It is time for all of us to take a long hard look at our voting record and ask ourselves if we elect officials we reasonably expect to compromise. The answer is clearly no.

Will Gonzalez is a sophomore majoring in secondary education. His column runs biweekly on Tuesdays.