When you behave like an arrogant, idiot asshole there
are consequences, yes?
--- Robert Gimbel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Disfavor for Bush Hits Rare Heights
>
> In Modern Era, Only Nixon and Truman Scored Worse,
> Just Barely
> By Peter Baker
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Wednesday, July 25, 2007; A03
>
> President Bush is a competitive guy. But this is one
> contest he would rather lose. With 18 months left in
> office, he is in the running for most unpopular
> president in the history of modern polling.
> The latest Washington Post-ABC News survey shows
> that 65 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's
> job performance, matching his all-time low.
> In polls conducted by The Post or Gallup going back
> to 1938, only twice has a president exceeded that
> level of public animosity -- Harry S. Truman, who
> hit 67 percent during the Korean War, and Richard M.
> Nixon, who hit 66 percent four days before
> resigning.
> The historic depth of Bush's public standing has
> whipsawed his White House, sapped his clout, drained
> his advisers, encouraged his enemies and jeopardized
> his legacy. Around the White House, aides make
> gallows-humor jokes about how they can alienate
> their remaining supporters -- at least those aides
> not heading for the door. Outside the White House,
> many former aides privately express anger and
> bitterness at their erstwhile colleagues, Bush and
> the fate of his presidency.
> Bush has been so down for so long that some advisers
> maintain it no longer bothers them much. It can
> even, they say, be liberating. Seeking the best
> interpretation for the president's predicament, they
> argue that Bush can do what he thinks is right
> without regard to political cost, pointing to
> decisions to send more U.S. troops to Iraq and to
> commute the sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby,
> Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff.
> But the president's unpopularity has left the White
> House to play mostly defense for the remainder of
> his term. With his immigration overhaul proposal
> dead, Bush's principal legislative hopes are to save
> his No Child Left Behind education program and to
> fend off attempts to force him to change course in
> Iraq. The emerging strategy is to play off a
> Congress that is also deeply unpopular and to look
> strong by vetoing spending bills.
> The president's low public standing has paralleled
> the disenchantment with the Iraq war, but some
> analysts said it goes beyond that, reflecting a
> broader unease with Bush's policies in a variety of
> areas. "It isn't just the Iraq war," said Shirley
> Anne Warshaw, a presidential scholar at Gettysburg
> College. "It's everything."
> Some analysts believe that even many war supporters
> deserted him because of his plan to open the door to
> legal status for illegal immigrants. "You can do an
> unpopular war or you can do an unpopular immigration
> policy," said David Frum, a former Bush
> speechwriter. "Not both."
> Yet Bush's political troubles seem to go beyond
> particular policies. Many presidents over the past
> 70 years have faced greater or more immediate crises
> without falling as far in the public mind -- Vietnam
> claimed far more American lives than Iraq, the
> Iranian hostage crisis made the United States look
> impotent, race riots and desegregation tore the
> country apart, the oil embargo forced drivers to
> wait for hours to fill up, the Soviets seemed to
> threaten the nation's survival.
> "It's astonishing," said Pat Caddell, who was
> President Jimmy Carter's pollster. "It's hard to
> look at the situation today and say the country is
> absolutely 15 miles down in the hole. The economy's
> not that bad -- for some people it is, but not
> overall. Iraq is terribly handled, but it's not
> Vietnam; we're not losing 250 people a week. . . .
> We don't have that immediate crisis, yet the anxiety
> about the future is palpable. And the feeling about
> him is he's irrelevant to that. I think they've
> basically given up on him."
> That may stem in part from the changing nature of
> society. When Caddell's boss was president, there
> were three major broadcast networks. Today cable
> news, talk radio and the Internet have made
> information far more available, while providing easy
> outlets for rage and polarization. Public
> disapproval of Bush is not only broad but deep; 52
> percent of Americans "strongly" disapprove of his
> performance and 28 percent describe themselves as
> "angry."
> "A lot of the commentary that comes out of the
> Internet world is very harsh," said Frank J.
> Donatelli, White House political director for Ronald
> Reagan. "That has a tendency to reinforce people's
> opinions and harden people's opinions."
> Carter and Reagan at their worst moments did not
> face a public as hostile as the one confronting
> Bush. Lyndon B. Johnson at the height of Vietnam had
> the disapproval of 52 percent of the public.
> Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F.
> Kennedy and Gerald R. Ford never had disapproval
> ratings reach 50 percent.
> Truman and Nixon remain the most unpopular modern
> presidents, though barely. Truman's disapproval
> rating reached 67 percent in January 1952 and
> matched Bush's 65 percent a month later. Nixon
> reached 66 percent on Aug. 5, 1974, four days before
> he resigned amid Watergate. George H.W. Bush came
> close before losing his bid for reelection in 1992,
> with 64 percent disapproval.
> The current president, though, has endured bad
> numbers longer than Nixon or his father did and
> longer than anyone other than Truman. His
> disapproval rating has topped 50 percent for more
> than two years. And although Truman hit 67 percent
> and 65 percent once each within a month-long period,
> Bush has hit his high three times in the past 14
> months.
> Bush advisers clutch at Truman as if he were a
> political life preserver. If Bush has experienced a
> similar collapse in public support while in office,
> they hope he will enjoy the same post-presidential
> reassessment that has made Truman look far better
> today than in his time. A 2004 poll by Greenberg
> Quinlan Rosner found that 58 percent of Americans
> viewed Truman favorably.
> And the president's team takes solace in the fact
> that the public holds Congress in low esteem, too.
> More than half disapproved of Congress generally,
> and Democrats in particular, in the latest Post-ABC
> survey, though their ratings were still better than
> Bush's.
> The deep antipathy to Bush has fueled grass-roots
> support for impeachment. Democrats have resolved not
> to do that, remembering the division when a
> Republican Congress impeached Bill Clinton in 1998
> for perjury and obstruction of justice to cover up
> his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky. His public
> support, though, never fell as far as Bush's.
> Clinton's worst disapproval rating, 51 percent, came
> during his first term, and he soared to his highest
> approval rating days after the Lewinsky scandal
> broke.
> As much as Bush advisers dismiss polls, their
> predecessors in the White House said public
> rejection invariably drags down the whole
> institution. "It colors everything you can do,"
> Donatelli said. "Psychologically, it wears on you."
> Caddell describes a White House down in the polls in
> one word: "Awful." "People start going through the
> motions," he added. "The energy is gone."
> Assistant polling director Jennifer Agiesta
> contributed to this report.
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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