Polls haven’t brought cheerful news for President George Bush and the White House in recent months. While some show small fluctuations, the overall trend has been south — with each new poll suggesting the public has seemingly now made up its mind about this presidency.
And the latest poll suggests that all of the President’s speeches, all the President’s p.r. men may not be able to put the Bush presidency back together again since it appears as if the public has concluded that it sees a far different Bush than Bush’s supporters see him or the White House wants people to see him. The situation now seems beyond spin repair:
Political reversals at home and continued bad news from Iraq have dragged President Bush’s standing with the public to a new low, at the same time that Republican fortunes on Capitol Hill also are deteriorating, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The survey found that 38 percent of the public approve of the job Bush is doing, down three percentage points in the past month and his worst showing in Post-ABC polling since he became president. Sixty percent disapprove of his performance…
Question: will the flap over his leaking info help or hurt him in the next polls? Will reports (which he adamantly denies…and the most logical explanation of what is going on is THIS) that his administration is planning to go to war with Iran and use tactical nukes help or hurt?
But here’s the worst news for the President in this poll:
Bush’s job approval rating has remained below 50 percent for nearly a year. Perhaps more ominous for the president, 47 percent in the latest poll say they “strongly” disapprove of Bush’s handling of the presidency — more than double the 20 percent who strongly approve. It marked the second straight month that the proportion of Americans intensely critical of the president was larger than his overall job approval rating. In comparison, the percentage who strongly disapproved of President Bill Clinton on that measure never exceeded 33 percent in Post-ABC News polls.
Meanwhile, the poll suggests that there’s reason for Republicans to be concerned:
With less than seven months remaining before the midterm elections, Bush’s political troubles already appear to be casting a long shadow over them. Barely a third of registered voters, 35 percent, approve of the way the Republican-held Congress is doing its job — the lowest level of support in nine years.
The negative judgments about the president and the congressional majority reflect the breadth of the GOP’s difficulties and suggest that problems of each may be mutually reinforcing. Although the numbers do not represent a precipitous decline over recent surveys, the fact that they have stayed at low levels over recent months indicates the GOP is confronting some fundamental obstacles with public opinion rather than a patch of bad luck.
Andrew Sullivan notes that these numbers are “stunning” given the economy and other factors. His conclusion: middle America has finally soured on GWB:
Historians will figure this out, but my own view is that Katrina did it. Katrina was the equivalent of Toto pulling back the curtain. Once Bush’s passivity, indolence and arrogance were put on full display, once it was apparent that the government was not working, and that Bush was the reason, people figured out why the war in Iraq was such a shambles. And so the mystique required to sustain patriarchal authority was shattered. I think this is largely irreparable because it’s about a basic assessment of a single man. What worries me is that we have almost three more years. If we face a confrontation or a crisis, this president will not be able to carry Americans with him. Our enemies will take comfort from this. Which is why re-electing him was such a terrible risk.
But there may be some bigger issues at play, as well.
Actually, it may be too early to write the Bush administration’s political obituary. There could be some kind of an event that unites Americans — such as another homeland terrorist attack. But even there, Bush has proven to be so much the antithesis of “a uniter not a divider” that it’s hard to imagine national unity EVER being what was on Sept. 12, 2001. His words do not carry the same weight because many Americans no longer believe them.
When the history of this administration is written we’d be almost willing to bet our house at a casino in Las Vegas that historians will say the Bush administration’s push for a new kind of strongman democracy was undercut by massive, multi-fronted credibility problems coupled with a short-sighted strategical decision that it could govern mostly from its base — and let much of the rest of the country take it, or leave it or simply go hang.
Yes, an administration could conceivably decide that its top priority would be decisions to please its base and and forget about centrists, independents, or Democrats. That technique could work if politics and developments weren’t so fluid — if there weren’t unforeseen crises popping up. Or plans that go awry. But when there are unforeseen crises or plans that go awry, you then need a reservoir of good will beyond your base. This administration doesn’t have it.
Katrina, as Sullivan notes, brought it all into focus. Then GOP activists were flabbergasted by the Harriet Miers’ proposed nomination to the Supreme Court. Next: news about warrantless wiretaps, and it took a while (plus some reported arm-twisting by Karl Rove) but many GOPers finally gave the White House the benefit of the doubt on that one. Then the ports deal. And, last week, suggestions that there may also be domestic surveillance without warrants as well.
Then, finally, it turned out that the Bush administration’s unrelenting war against leakers actually had a teeny-weenie exception: the President could leak because when he did so it was in the national interest if it was to defend himself…in contrast to whistleblowers who were unpatriotic for leaking information unflattering to the President and his administration.
In each case, in each controversy, a White House under fire issues lawyerly arguments that sound like variations on former President Bill Clinton’s (in)famous statement that “it all depends on what is is.” The public is getting the impression that this is an administration run by defense lawyers.
Meanwhile, since Katrina, seldom a month (or week) has gone by where there isn’t some new twist underscoring that what the administration proclaims is later likely destined to be explained or have to be spun in detail because reality often turns out different from what the public was originally led to believe.
People may differ on policies; that’s typical in American politics. But when you have constant examples of official explanations at variance with facts or only having actually explained a small part of the facts mixed with allegations of incompetence and poor managerial oversight many voters’ perceptions get set in concrete. And the concrete is nearly dry — if it isn’t rock hard already.
Of course, this won’t stop the radio and cable talk shows from going on the attack. It won’t stop adminstration defenders and some weblogs from taking up the administration’s case and/or going after those who dare criticize it.
But all the weblogs and radio and cable talk shows won’t help to reverse the downward poll spiral as an ever-increasingly large number of Americans of differing ideologies are now are akin to the little boy who looked at the emperor and said he had no clothes.
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.