Apprentice:

The vast majority of members of both houses of the US congress are decent, non-corrupt people of above average intelligence honestly trying to do good by their country. (90%)

Downvoted for agreement.

However, I must add that it would be extremely fallacious to conclude from this fact that the country is being run competently and not declining or even headed for disaster. This fallacy would be based on the false assumption that the country is actually run by the politicians in practice. (I am not arguing for these pessimistic conclusions, at least not in this context, but merely that given the present structure of the political system, optimistic conclusions from the above fact are generally unwarranted.)