I hope I didn’t come across as snarky.
Pretty sad, Congress and Dubya are about equal in the eyes of the country.
Not single digits. The graph bottoms out at 20%.
We know.
But until you back your words (or opinions polls) with deeds, many may (sadly) doubt the depth of your convictions.
If this President (and Vice-President) are unimpeachable (given their activities and actions to date) it raises questions (at least in this fairly apolitical foreigner’s mind) as to the workability of your systems of checks and balances.
I can’t imagine a stable situation (not a big war, depression/boom, emergency, etc) where I would expect approval rating to be higher than 33% for very long. 1 out of 2 ppl automatically hates you because they’re on the other end of the spectrum. How hard would it be to piss off some moderates once or twice in your term? Person A doesn’t like what you did on Tuesday and Person B doesn’t like what you did on Thursday. Person C likes both. That doesn’t seem so far fetched.
Heh…I hope I didn’t come off as snarky either. I just recited from memory.
I’m not using an emoticon, dammit. I hate those things.
It can be hard to convince some non-Americans that most of us don’t like or approve of whoever happens to be in office. I once had a heated email exchange with a foreigner kept insisting that, since we had elected Bush, he was more or less our entire country rolled into one person. Assuming for the sake of argument that he actually did win 51% of the vote, I found this person’s attitude rather dismissive of the other 49%.
Your system does appear to invest that one person with a great deal of centralised power; seeing your President as the (single) face and voice of the US is perhaps an understandable error… even if we know intellectually that he is not, and that many there (and here on this board) do not approve of his actions.
In my experience, most don’t.
Also many people don’t get why we “don’t just impeach him.” Many don’t realise impeach =/= motion of confidence/no confidence. You can’t make a motion and have a new general election the next day (I realize I’m grossly oversimplifying these motions here). Not to mention the motions rarely work in bi-partisan systems anyway but…
(Yes I know an MoC would be more apt to dissolving Congress than the President but some of the Germans visting down here in the German American Partnership Program brought impeachment of the pres as a similarity to a VoC)
I think it’s an interesting question, but the only people who are going to respond are Dopers, who might rightly think that based on the threads around here that Bush is all we talk about sometimes. I’m frankly more interested in responses like this one, because I have a gut feeling that this is probably more the case than some of us would realize.
Wow, I can hardly remember living in a country with leaders who have even a few supporters.
Over here, eveyone always hates the top. One recent PM had to resign when his support was seemingly limited to friends of his mother.
In answer to the question, no, most Japanese are not aware that Bush is hated as much as he is. However, most Japanese disapprove of their own PM, so it shouldn’t be a big surprise.
To our non-American Dopers:
In light of the discussion on this thread, could you PLEASE spread the word amongst your fellow citizens about Dubya’s unpopularity amongst the majority of Americans.
Maybe the more people we can get around the world to help us count-down the days when we gain release from our “national nincompoop” (Dubya), the quicker the time will seem to pass!
Yeah, for God’s sake. I want to be able to travel again without being accosted by the populace.
Bill Clinton was impeached 10 years ago for far less heinous crimes than Bush.
When you stop elected people like Bush and his ilk then sure. As it is the Republicans are running a crazy old war-mongering bigoted panderer and your citizens seem inclined to vote for him in huge numbers. Not a lot of slack there to cut.
Speaking from across the water, I think that what amazes us is not how unpopular he is, but how he managed to get voted in twice. Once I can put down to a mistake, but twice…?
If we could search, I’d look for my comment after your 2004 election, along the lines of “I will never understand what the hell the majority of your country is thinking.”
Why the fuck did you vote him in at that time? Need a strong leader in this time of crisis? Don’t send a message to our enemies? Scared of terrorists? If I were a greater fool than I like to think I am am, I might respond with “Goddamn mother-effing cowardly Americans”. But I’m not so I won’t, as I respect the democratic process.
Anyway, nice to see you’ve finally woken up to something the rest of the world has known for more than eight years. What took you so long?
P.S. I apologise for Blair’s re-election too.
The Prime Minister in a Westminster style parliamentary democracy has far more power than any President in an American style democracy could ever hope to have, surely? Or am I mistaken?
>But until you back your words (or opinions polls) with deeds, many may (sadly) doubt the depth of your convictions.
This is a great frustration. I am baffled as to why about 1/6 of my fellow Americans voted for Bush, twice. And, about 1/6 of us voted for his main competition (Gore, and then Kerry). I can’t answer for that first 1/6, but it’s not my fault. I was horrified to learn about Bush during the 2000 campaign, and have been consistently voting against him and giving donations to the other side since.
Dopers may remember an open letter of appology I wrote on the eve of the 2004 election, at which time the outcome looked too close to an even split to predict. I made the point that the world would likely congratulate us on wising up if Bush lost, and be even more accusitory towards us if he won again, whereas the truth was that roughly similar numbers of us were going to vote in each direction, and that that was the real tragedy.
I’ve been convinced for years now that as a simple ethical matter all Americans are obligated to vote and make donations against the Republican party. Not that I’ve been thrilled about Democratic candidates all along, but rather because Republican party activities have been uniformly reprehensible and embarrassing and inexcuseable.
I and no doubt many of my fellow citizens want to stuff fortune messages saying “We didn’t vote for him, help us escape” into the cookies we’re baking in Democracy jail.
And, worst of all, while I understand the principle that Democracy as a form of government gives a kind of credibility to the countries that adopt it because government is vetted by the consent of the governed, I am afraid it isn’t true. Consent is only meaningful if it is informed consent. And our government keeps lying to us, and hiding things from us, and many of us don’t bother to become informed about the things that are in the open anyway.
Just heard the other day about a grad student in social work, in Maryland (the next step North from the Capitol), who voted against Obama for being Muslim. And so it goes on and on and on…
I’m an American living abroad (and I refuse to pretend to be a Canadian and think people who do are totally lame) and I’ve found that it’s not really that big a deal, although it probably depends a lot on where you go. I’ve had people ask me about George Bush and since I have hated him since Day 1, I just say “I don’t get it either, I didn’t vote for him and I don’t understand the people who did” and that pretty much ends the conversation. (I think I scared this German guy in Sarajevo when I really got rolling, so now I try to keep it short.) Anyone who tries to keep on about it isn’t really worth talking to anyway, like this asshole British guy I met in Turkey recently who was obviously only trying to piss me off.