University of Virginia Political Scientist Larry Sabato, in his latest edition of his highly-acclaimed and free Crystal Ball enewsletter, offers a memo of advice to President George W. Bush on how he can rebound.
And to sum up, it’s this: adapt, change course on several issues (including the war), admit a big error, shake your administration up with some house-cleaning and new blood…and more. Here’s how he starts out:
Things are bad, Mr. President. Really bad. We can tell you already know that, since it is written all over your pained expression when you appear in public. Before the past few months, you haven’t had a time of Gallup Poll testing like most of your predecessors. Because of September 11th, you spent most of the first term in Gallup’s stratosphere (the 60’s and 70’s) and you never lost the half of the populace that voted for you twice. Now the delayed tumble has come with a vengeance, and even parts of your base have melted away, leaving you mired in the mid- to upper-30’s.
Here’s a summary of what he writes. Please read the original post IN FULL if you want more details, since we are going to give you the bare bones here. And remember: unlike some other political prognosticators who are seen a lot on TV, political panel shoutfests, or write columns, Sabato has an EXCELLENT record on making solid predictions.
He shows a graph illustrating where other presidents were in the polls and concludes:
The lesson is obvious, Mr. President: You’re a lot closer to Nixon than you are to Eisenhower, Reagan, and Clinton. And that’s not where you want to be. Nixon’s second term ended rather badly, as you will recall.
Of course, only some isolated voices on the far left are calling for your impeachment or resignation. But let’s think this through. You’ve got 38 months still to serve as President–that’s four months longer than the entire John F. Kennedy Presidency, as The Hotline recently noted. You don’t want to endure years in the White House with an unfriendly public. It isn’t good for you, and it’s not good for the country either. As you’ve reminded us many times, we’re at war with a group of truly evil terrorists who would gladly see us all dead. They are cheering your bad fortune and hoping you won’t recover and can’t lead.
You need to surprise them. And to do that, you need to surprise your critics by proving more flexible and inclusive than we’ve ever seen you. Are you up to the task? If you aren’t, history will almost certainly judge you a failed President…
Then he details these points (go to the link above to read them in more detail):
(1) Accept Political Reality on Iraq. The American people have turned against your war, and they’re not turning back. Congressman John Murtha’s revolt is just the latest sign. Iraq is an argument you can no longer win.
(2) Start Aggressive Credit-Taking for a Good Economy. To judge by the polls, the American public thinks we’re on the verge of another Great Depression. High gas prices and home heating oil, the Katrina bungling, mass layoffs at GM and the sour mood caused by Iraq explain some of this. In fact, though, we’re in a sweet spot—the economy’s not too cold and not too hot, unemployment and inflation are low, growth is solid despite the hurricanes…
(3) Retool, retool, retool. Your Social Security reform is dead. Your immigration reform is dead. Your tax proposals are comatose, and the undertaker is on standby. Here’s the unpleasant truth: The creative period of your Presidency is over. You’re not going to remake anything much in the remaining years of your term because the public is unwilling and the treasury is empty. You need to move from policy innovation to consolidation…
(4) Re-Staff, Re-Staff, Re-Staff. We’re sorry if no one has told you, Mr. President, but parts of your staff are burned out, controversial, and increasingly mired in scandal(s)…(5) Admit One Big Error and Correct It. We’ve put this last, in case you grow angry at the suggestion and stop reading. (We’ve heard you’ve got a heck of a temper!) Everyone knows you are stubborn and loath to acknowledge any mistake–in part because your many enemies would never let you forget it. We know you’ll never admit any error on Iraq, and there’s no chance you’ll change course on the tax cuts. So let’s choose something that even your strongest supporters in Congress deeply regret: the Medicare drug benefit.
His final key point is this:
Mr. President, you know instinctively that the times are too partisan, and you have burned too many bridges, to regain the backing of Democratic voters. Count on 90-95 percent of them being opposed to you all the way to January 20, 2009. However, you can recapture many of the Republicans and Independents who have left your side. (Right now, you’re losing about 15 percent of GOP voters and close to two-thirds of the Independents.).
We’ve said that repeatedly here: Bush is crashing in the polls due to steady loss of support among moderate Republicans and Independents.
Another irony not mentioned by Sabato: Bush is also tanking because he is losing the support of the BUSH REPUBLICANS — the ones who followed BUSH 41. Boil it down? Bush can try to govern with mostly his base but, as Sabato notes, there are perils:
Realistically, while you probably will never again see a 60 percent approval rating in the Gallup Poll, you can slowly climb back over 50 percent. It’s going to take a lot of hard work and day-to-day incremental progress. But the only alternative to this kind of Purgatory is a three-year-long Hades of deep unpopularity and the inability to lead. It’s a White House prison term that neither you nor the country wants to see. Good luck!