Keeping It In Perspective
Since I have gone on record saying that Bush’s approval rating couldn’t get any lower (around the time Katrina was biting him so hard), and since I was obviously so dreadfully wrong, allow me to make a new prediction: George W. Bush’s approval rating cannot possibly go beyond -3.5% approval (that’s 0% approval minus the typical margin of error).
However, look at the sidebar on this CNN story, and you’ll see an interesting tale: of the modern Presidents, only Eisenhower and Kennedy never sank as low or lower than Bush…so is it bad? Oh, hell, yeah…but it could be worse, hard to believe as that may be…
[...] OK I lied, I found something interesting… Over at Decision ‘08, there is a note of this CNN story. Check out the sidebar: Presidents’ Low Marks: [...]
Actually, if you use USA Today’s historical figures from their 10/17 article, Bush is currently tied with Clinton and Ford, is slightly better than Johnson and Reagan, and is far better than his dad, Carter, and Nixon.
While he is still the lowest he’s ever been, he is still in a 3 way tie for having the best low numbers of any president in 42 years.
It’s plausible.
Big tribute to his base. I still think he’s at 40, some of the polls are dubious, and rassmussen is pretty solid.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Bush_Job_Approval.htm
The number would be lower if not for a solid base. Despite the base having an 80% approval rating(from around 36-37% of the population), it would only account for 30 of his 40 pts. The 10 is solidly coming from moderate/independents. Bush is surprisingly holding on to half of them(my guestimate size is 20% of population). IS he low? Yea, but after all this, the ones left are true believers about finishing Iraq.
In all honesty John Q. doesn’t see any progress in Iraq. all he understands is a body count, without any ‘explicit’ signs of progress, what is he to believe? (let’s be honest-there are two types of people who follow Iraq closely, advocates looking for hope, and critics looking to be proven right, but ther might be 10 million people who actually can name 5 Iraqi cities. The three factions of Iraq? Maybe 15 million can pull it off. I congratulate the dems for taking advantage of the lack of knowledge about Iraq, that the WH has really failed to provide.
There is another factor which includes the dems bringing government down thru conspiracy theories.The plan goes-Republicans are the power in government, Sow distrust in government, people won’t trust republicans. It is dragging them down also. (Fox has congressional Dems @ 33%, congressional republicans @ 34%.) The funny thing is, they think they can stop this type of attack the minute the get elected(,or maybe they don’t care about afterwards, they just want to back into power at any price).
Bush is safe but he’ll be wounded until Iraq is resolved. It would follow that after the Dec 15th election in Iraq, a withdrawal plan will be set up for presentation in his State of the Union. (Objectives achieved-Saddam out, new government installed, security force established-were done and gone.) bush pulls this off, with the Republicans expressing their belief in the success, and he’ll be at 52-54%.
Mtl’s got a good point about the public’s general ignorance of Iraq and much else. In that sense Bush bears a pretty heavy responsibility for these cruddy numbers. Not because of policy mistakes, but because this administration has been absolutely terrible at presenting its own side of the story.
The Veteran’s Day speech was a welcome change from Bush’s habit of sitting back and letting the MSM spin the story pretty much any way they want, but I hope it wasn’t a one-shot event. Bush may have fallen through the 40 percent floor, but unless he and his minions start aggressively presenting their case to the public, 40 percent is going to start looking like a ceiling.
[...] Decision 08′ is trying to “Keep [Them] In Perspecive”: “Of the modern Presidents, only Eisenhower and Kennedy never sank as low or lower than Bush…so is it bad?” [...]