Wow. Bush’s approval rating is now at 35%, according to a CBS News poll. (One wonders if their new chief, a Bush/Cheney donor in the last election, would have to say about this.) According to the graphic below, that puts him within spitting distance of Nixon’s approval rating during his second term and at the height of Watergate, and lower than Clinton at the height of the Lewinsky scandal.
Even those close to Bush are now saying the president has lost his way, in part due to events beyond his control.
The public’s loss of faith in Bush goes back many months to the early weeks of the Iraq war, when nearly two-thirds of Americans found him trustworthy. Less than half felt that way in October, according to the Pew Research Center.
One issue is the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, Bush’s chief rationale for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Rather than admit a mistake, Bush emphasized other reasons for war.
The president’s credibility and competency took another hit when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. The sluggish relief effort left some wondering whether a government that failed to provide food and water to refugees could protect them from terrorism.
Bush accepted responsibility, but the belated and reluctant nature of his mea culpa did not go over well with Americans who like their leaders to be buck-stops-here accountable.
… Besides, this is not all his fault. Like other presidents, Bush is captive to events that are out of his control.
When terrorists strike in Iraq, Bush pays a price. When globalization squeezes middle-class Americans, they don’t feel the U.S. economic rebound. When a hurricane hits the Gulf Coast, a perfect government response is going to miss some people’s needs.
Of course, I’m less inclined to let Bush off the hook on some of this stuff, because some of it was clearly not beyond his control.
I’m unconvinced that the Iraq war and the failure to find WMDs was a “mistake,” because the intelligence on WMDs was obviously questionable from the beginning, and the stuff I’m reading (like Chain of Command) suggests that there was at worst a deliberate decision to ignore obvious signs that would discredit intelligence or at best that the Bush administration was alseep at the wheel when it came to intelligence on Iraq WMDs. Plus stuff like the Downing Street memo, suggests that intelligence was being “fixed around policy.”
Bush may not have been able to stop hurricane Katrina, but the downgrading of FEMA and the appointment of a political hack — Michael Brown — happened on his watch. Bush could also have chosen to respond to the hurricane aftermath differently than he did.
Now he’s facing a scandal that might cost him his closest aide. But Bush knew as early as 2003 about Rove’s part in the Plame outing, and kept him on staff. He said he would fire anyone who was involved, but when it became clear that Rove was involved, he moved the goalposts back to to say he’d fire anyone found to have committed a crime. Again, the president’s in the position he’s in because of his choices.
It all comes back to a favorite conservative phrase, “personal responsibility.” If the president’s ratings are going downhill, it’s because he started the ball rolling himself. The question is, with three years left to serve how far can he fall and still be an effective president? Then again, we’ve seen what we get when he’s effective in terms of his agenda. Maybe we’re better off if he can’t be an effective president, and simply plays the role of seatwarmer in the oval office.
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