Here’s the Gallop article. Bush’s approval rating has steadily dropped 20 points over the past 11 months; it stands at 64 percent. I think whatever political capital he gained by acting as calm and decisive as he did following 9.11 is fading fast and people are wondering what he’s done for them lately.
Other than fail to reform business after the Enron fallout, relax environmental standards for business, appoint a railroad man to head the Treasury, false start on his faith based initiative and private school voucher program, squander a trillion dollar surplus on a tax cut that almost no one agrees with, return defense spending and the federal deficit back to Cold War levels, create $40 billion worth of redundant and poorly organized bureaucracy in the Homeland Security cabinet, allow John Ashcroft to eat away at civil liberties in the name of false security, take a unilateral and potentially isolationist stance against the UN, attempt to deflect attention away from our continued vulnerability with a harebrained scheme to substitute Saddam for OBL, allegedly putting as much (or more) effort into selling his policies than goes into actually formulating them (cite), and generally appearing like Don Rumsfeld and Karl Rove are pulling his strings.
America has spoken, and they don’t like what they see. The patriotic bubble couldn’t last forever. The question is will Bush make a change, or devote even more focus to spin, propagandizing, strategizing, and PR.
I’m bad at math, but isn’t 64% a lot higher than 36%? And isn’t a 5% difference a fairly small one? It seems that a small majority of people are unhappy about a handful of issues, but the majority still like the president so they’re not really sending a clear message of disaproval.
Wow, what bad timing. The President’s popularity was enough, apparently, to significantly affect the GOP mid-term election gains, but now it’s rock-bottom, eh?
Well, then no need to worry about 2004 - Bush will be voted right out. Everyone against Bush can relax, secure in the knowledge that he hasn’t a prayer.
I’ll address all of you at once, if that’s all right.
The President is responsible for shaping the nation’s meta-agenda. Each and every item I listed can be traced directly back to Bush and, as I thought was implied, his supporters in Congress as well. Corporate malfeasance, the environment, the economy, the faith based initiative and voucher program, taxation policy, appointments like Ashcroft and Snow, and foreign policy; Bush made a call on each and every one in the past two years, and a steady decline in approval combined with a recent poll showing the first reversal of American sentiment to “dissatisfaction with the course of the nation” speaks volumes about what American’s think of his decisions. Support for Bush is flagging, but that’s not to say the ’04 election is over, he has two years to reverse the trend of the past 11 months.
11 months on the decline, no economic recovery in sight, and a war with Iraq fewer and fewer people are interested in. Bush is burning political capital like no tomorrow, at this rate he’ll be at 44 by this time next year…and scraping 20 by the election. Of course, it would never get that low. Even if he sent out Christmas Cards with a pic of him drowning puppies a sizeable portion of this country would still take him over anything the Dems had to offer. And like I said, I wouldn’t put it past him to pull off a turnaround, but all I’m saying is Bush had better get his act together soon cause the old one is wearing thin on America fast.
Frankly, I couldn’t be happier that I’m now part of a majority of Americans unsatisfied “With the Way Things are Going in the United States.”
It beats being the “unpatriotic ingrate” I was a few months ago.
Yo lib, I’m not saying anything dramatic. I’m just pointing out that Bush isn’t the invincible man he once was, he’s taking hits, and I see no reason for them to stop now.
Confused about the word(s) meta-agenda; according to one meaning at Dictionary.com it means an agenda about agendas. Very confusing. Could you check the link and advise which dictionary meaning you mean or could you point me to a link explaining meta-agenda.
O’Neil got booted because he saw the fault in Bush’s economic policies. Snow was selected because he’s on board the tax cuts for the rich, deregulate everything game plan.
Meta- Beyond; transcending; more comprehensive
Meta-agenda- The totality of all agendas
Let’s not get lost in semantics, I think you got my drift.
So…what were Clinton’s and Regan’s approval ratings like by the halfway point of their first terms? (feel free to add other 20th century presidents who ran more than one term, too) Maybe with those numbers we could put at 64% approval rating into perspective.
(Raises hand) I’m part of that portion. But I want to state on the record that I don’t approve of drowning puppies.
Honest to God, what is the point of these threads wherein we try to predict what will happen in two years based on an uptick or a downtick in some poll? What value do these predictions have? Seriously…there’s enough time between now and election '04 for Bush’s approval ratings to drop down to historic lows and then rebound back into the high 80s a half dozen times. I’d count myself a fool if I tried to predict the future more than a few months ahead based on any of it.
I’ll say it again, I didn’t make any grand predictions, I linked to a gallop chart showing a slide taking place in the last year and offered that it will continue unless a change is made. You Bushies shouldn’t take it so personally. Perhaps if you offered some reasons why Bush is going to turn things around…
Actually kniz, up until about May of this year I felt quite differently about many of these issues. I was a huge supporter of Bush and the US. By May I had completed a class on Islamic Revivalism and for the first time got to hear the opposition’s POV, see their propaganda, and to be perfectly honest I found it a little more convincing than ours. Prior to that I also considered myself a social democrat, but an economic conservative. Studying the Reagan administration disillusioned me of that.
