I believe President George Bush’s job approval ratings have only just barely eked above the 40 mark a couple of times in the past two years.\u00c2\u00a0 He has spent his entire second term mired in the 30s.\u00c2\u00a0 If memory serves right, Clinton’s approval ratings shrank into the 30s in his first few months, but otherwise coasted with a low ebb at around 45 — that, probably\u00c2\u00a0taking a\u00c2\u00a0point or two,\u00c2\u00a0being where he stood at his disasterous 1994 mid-term point, which promptly created the Time “Incredibly Shrinking President” cover and his “The President is still relevant” statement in his 1995 State of the Union speech.\u00c2\u00a0 In a previous life, 40 percent was seen as abysmally low ratings and a sign of a president in peril.\u00c2\u00a0 Today, it means a president on the rebound, gaining momentum, ready to “surge”, I tell you, “surge”.<\/p>\n
Of course, Clinton was up into the 60s through most of the Impeachment debacle.\u00c2\u00a0 I suspect mostly by way of comparison, a foil of a foil.<\/p>\n
Bush is stuck in a defensive crouch.\u00c2\u00a0 History may vindicate him yet, but that owes more to the peculiar biases of our historians.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve been meaning to read over the 60 Minutes transcript.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve heard some sound clips.\u00c2\u00a0 He accepts responsibility for Iraq not going as well as planned, stating that the public needs somebody to blame and if they don’t blame him they may blame the troops.\u00c2\u00a0 It is statements like that that make me consider the answer to the question “If you could ask or say one thing to President Bush, what would you say?” — “Go away.”<\/p>\n
I understand Bush has picked up bi-partisan support for his quote-in-quote “surge” plan.\u00c2\u00a0 The name he cites is Joseph Lieberman — who, you will remember, lost the Democratic nomination and thus switched parties to the “Connecticut for Lieberman” party.\u00c2\u00a0 Bush has assembled a grand Republican — Connecticut for Lieberman coalition for the policy of punting the Iraq War over to the next president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I believe President George Bush’s job approval ratings have only just barely eked above the 40 mark a couple of times in the past two years.\u00c2\u00a0 He has spent his entire second term mired in the 30s.\u00c2\u00a0 If memory serves right, Clinton’s approval ratings shrank into the 30s in his first few months, but otherwise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}