The latest poll shows a significant rise in President George Bush’s approval rating — suggesting that his numbers may have bottomed out and that he’s slowly on the rebound:
(CBS) There is good news and bad news in this poll for President George W. Bush. Americans have become more positive about the economy; more than half think the economy is in good shape, an 8-point increase since October.
The President’s overall approval rating has risen from 35 percent in October to 40 percent now, and his ratings on handling the economy and the war in Iraq have also improved.
But while this poll shows some improvement in Americans’ views about how the war in Iraq is going, most continue to say it is going badly. Americans remain firm in their desire for U.S. troops to at least start coming home, and would like to see a timetable for that process.
Although President Bush has said he will not do this, 58 percent of Americans want the United States to set a timetable for troop withdrawal.
So this means: (1)People who totally wrote off the Bush presidency perhaps jumped the gun (if his polls continue to go up), (2)He has regained some of his lost base, and (3)When Democrats call for some kind of timetable they’re more in sync with what most Americans want than the White House and those who insist no kind of timetable should be set.
In other words: Bush remains a force to be reckoned with — but so do the Democrats….even if the Democrats continue to call for a timetable.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.