58% is still rather good for a president, but you don’t have to be an ace statistician to see Bush has been losing ground for 11 straight months. It appears Americans have been losing faith that the President has corporate fraud, the economy, OBL, Saddam, and N. Korea all well in hand. I expect Bush to stay the course and continue with his supply-side economic strategy and hard-nosed, unilateral foreign policy. I’ll give him all due credit if manages to pull them off, but I’m not holding my breath.
The last time I posted a story like this, I was told that this isn’t a slide, it’s a stabilization, and Bush does have everything well in hand. I was expecting a similar response this time as well.
I’m not particularly a Bush fan, but I don’t really see this as a decline in popularity so much as a return to normalcy after an unusual popularity spike (that whomever happened to be president at the time would have gotten) as a result of 9/11.
I have been waiting for this for a long time. The attacks on 9/11 were the best possible thing that could have happened to save Bush’s presidency and he knows it.
Before 9/11, people were recognizing Bush for what he really is, namely a brainless, profoundly ignorant prep school cowboy who had never suceeded at anything in his entire life that wasn’t literally given to him via his family and/or family friends. Bush has never had any domestic policy whatsoever other than lining the pockets of his biggest campaign contributors and kissing the asses of power brokers like Dick Cheney.
Without the fraudulent “war on terrorism,” Bush has literally nothing to hide behind, no way to mask his sheer incompetence, just like his buddy Ariel “Man of Peace” Sharon, who is now going down the tubes, thank G~d.
People like Bush/Saddam/Osama and Sharon/Arafat all need each other all need each other as parasites needs hosts, except that in these cases, the hosts are also parasites in a wonderfully reciprocal love/hate arrangement that would be profoundly beautiful if only it were mutually fatal.
5% in one week is not a slide, it is a plummet. There is a very interesting article in this month’s Atlantic magazine centering around the conflict between socially conservative Pubbies and socially progressive Dems. The expressed opinion boils down to this: as long as the Pubbies can keep the voters focused on war and terror, they will continue to maintain thier grip on power, as the voters see them as more competent in matters of death and horror.
I very much doubt that this has escaped the notice of Mr. Rove and the dark alchemists of his cabal. Indeed, some skeptical observers suggest that his is precisely why Iraq suddenly went from back burner to urgent crisis overnight.
Absent any other sensible explanation, I am inclined to agree. But they have made a dangerous decision, in the sense that whomsoever rides the tiger dare not dismount. And to put GeeDubya in the role of a Leader of Men is akin to casting Elmer Fudd as Churchill.
I don’t know who should be more insulted, cowboys or prep schools.
Anybody else notice how Dubya got especially threatening with Iraq as soon as the poll came out yesterday? “I am SICK and TIRED of these POLL NUM . . . er, WEAPONS OF MASS TERRORISM.”
Bush has been saying he wants to attack Iraq and forcefully remove Saddam from power for a year now. How was his most recent comment on the subject “especially threatening”? Is he now going to give Saddam an atomic wedgie, too?
And President Clinton spoke out agaist Iraq for the duration of his 8 years in office, even going so far as to make “regime change in Iraq” the official American policy. Was he going for poll-spikes, too?
A valid point. But the question remains: if Clinton didn’t need regime change in Iraq to raise his public opinion levels, what “other sensible explanation” did he have for announcing a policy of regime change?
