4-13-05, 8:52 am

Is it the price of gas? Quagmire in Iraq? Bad ideas on Social Security? Support for intervention in Terri Schiavo’s life decisions? Economic stagnation? Exploding budget deficits? A slow response to the tsunami disaster? Leadership of a corruption-ridden Party? Just what has made George W. Bush’s approval rating the lowest at this point in a second term in presidential history?

Only 38 percent – roughly equal to self-described Republicans and conservative loyalists – of people say Bush is doing a good or excellent job in the first 100 days of second term.

Bush’s low numbers in his second term really begin with the razor-thin election results last November that just haven’t helped him overcome strong doubts most people hold about the legitimacy of the 2000 election and the Florida fiasco. Bush got less than 51 percent of the vote, making it one of the closest presidential re-elections on record.

Let’s face it, Bush simply isn’t a popular president. In fact Bush’s approval ratings spread out over his tenure in office simply haven’t been that good, except when he has been able to use terrorism as a political card to push legislation or deploy military forces.

Now as it is becoming painfully obvious to most people that they may have been duped by the terrorism card – has Bush even said the T-word since November 2nd or Osama Bin Laden? – popular support for Bush on his non-terrorist related agenda has collapsed, if indeed it ever existed.

His supporters spin this growing opposition as a result of Bush’s leadership style and his emphatic resolution to get his ideas pushed in Congress. This, they say, sometimes rubs people the wrong way.

The truth is that Bush misled voters in his campaign in 2004. He insisted that his entire campaign and reason for being was fighting terrorism, which, if people voted for Kerry, would strike and kill Americans all over the place.

Now, he is solely focused, as he admitted to the press recently, on privatizing Social Security. People on the lookout for con games usually call this a 'bait and switch.'

So Bush’s lack of credibility is a major reason for his record low approval numbers.

Here’s another example. When the WMD Commission found that intelligence used directly to provide the president with a rationale for launching a massive invasion of Iraq was 'dead wrong,' the confidence a slight majority of the people may have once had in Bush and his leadership was severely shaken. Could they trust him ever again? If he had to make claims about real dangers, could we believe him? Could the world?

Given the seriousness, danger, and death of war, can we believe him on any other claim he has made or policy he supports?

This development is complicated by the fact that the WMD Commission was only allowed to comment on intelligence failures not on the role of White House officials and even the president in manipulating information they knew to be suspect or incorrect for the sake of making a case for war. Critics of the rush to war and UN weapons inspectors at the time found plausible problems with the 'evidence' supplied to us about the existence of WMD in Iraq.

When we think about the war generally, the picture of Bush’s role in the war gets even more shameful and disheartening for most people. Torture at Abu Ghraib and numerous other US-detention facilities were rationalized and authorized by the Justice Department and by the Pentagon in 2003. Bush’s appointees, even close personal friends, claimed that the administration did not have to abide by international law and agreements like the Geneva Conventions.

Since the Abu Ghraib revelations, the Pentagon has rushed to pretend it always supported the conventions against torture, while trying to hide further revelations about just how widespread the problem is.

Meanwhile, the war in Iraq is officially a quagmire, despite earlier denials, as Rumsfeld admitted on Tuesday (April 12) that the US has no exit strategy.

This war, which most Americans view as the wrong war started for the wrong reasons, seems to be a permanent war and occupation in the eyes of the Bush administration.

And if you ask Bush who is responsible for intelligence failures, quagmire, torture, deficits, and other major problems, he or his shills point the proverbial finger: the CIA, 'a few bad apples,' the Democrats, the media, the trial lawyers, the activist judges, gay people, Black people, poor people, immigrants (from Mexico, not Eastern Europe), the UN, teachers, etc. One of his Pentagon people even blamed veterans who use too many of their benefits as a cause of rising deficits.

Bush administration talking point number one: everyone else, not the man in charge, is responsible for the problems we are confronted with.

Low credibility, blame-shifting, bad policy, misleadership, and corruption are at the root of Bush’s problem with the people. My only questions are, with this record, how is it possible for anyone to view the job he has done as good or excellent, and what would be so bad about recalling him?



--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.