As unpopular as Nixon during Watergate

July 10, 2007

Quite a while ago, I vowed not to do regular posts noting the president’s declining poll numbers. After a while, there just wasn’t any point — he’s unpopular; we get it.

But today marks an interesting milestone in the annals of Bush’s declining political fortunes. Chris Bowers explains.

His current disapproval rating in the latest Gallup poll, 66%, equals Richard Nixon’s highest Gallup disapproval rating of 66%, registered the week before he resigned from office. Back then, Gallup was the only organization conducting presidential approval polls, and thus the Gallup poll is always taken as the gold standard for historical comparisons.

That’s really quite an accomplishment. Nixon had been exposed as running a criminal enterprise out of his White House. At that point, exactly two-thirds of the nation said they disapproved of his job performance. And as of right now, the exact same number disapprove of Bush’s job performance.

Just think, Bush might soon get even less popular, suggesting he could sink lower than Nixon at the height of Watergate.

The rest of the Gallup poll included the results you’d expect — Americans hate the war and want the troops out, the public is dissatisfied with the economy, the country overwhelmingly disapproved of Bush commuting Libby’s prison sentence — but the poll also included, surprisingly enough, a question on impeachment.

By 62%-36%, those surveyed say an impeachment inquiry against Bush, promoted by some liberal websites including ImpeachBush.com, wouldn’t be justified.

Gallup’s 36% support for impeachment is a bit lower than other national polls, but I’d just add that it’s still 10 points higher than support for Clinton impeachment when, you know, he was actually being impeached.

And as long as we’re talking about polls, let’s not forget our old friend, the Vice President.

Vice President Dick Cheney’s popularity has hit an all-time low, with recent polling by The New York Times and CBS News suggesting that he has replaced Dan Quayle as the most unpopular vice president in recent history.

Two polls taken in May and June reveal an erosion of Mr. Cheney’s base of support — seen in both his job approval rating and his favorability. Just 28 percent of those polled in June approve of the job Mr. Cheney is doing, while 59 percent disapprove — a reading similar to that of President Bush. (In July, 1992, Dan Quayle’s job approval rating reached an all-time low with 63 percent of the public disapproving of the job he was doing as vice president.)

The highest rating for Mr. Cheney was 56 percent in August 2002. Mr. Cheney’s favorability among Americans has also suffered — it fell to 13 percent in May, from a high of 43 percent in October 2000.

Thirteen? Only 13% of Americans have a favorable view of the VP? Wow.

He’s quite a “uniter,” you know.

I don’t usually quote Tucker Carlson, but he did have a funny one about Cheney the other day. He said Cheney is less popular than syphilis.

  • I have taken some heat for prior posts opposing impeachment of Bush, but these poll numbers are exactly my concern – and not because I think political calculations are more important than the law.

    Impeachment is a wrenching endeavor for the body politic. It takes massive amounts of resources, and can be very polarizing. It is true that the public support for impeaching Clinton was even lower when the Rethugs started the process, but the bar surely is not “the Rethugs did it, so we can.” That move backfired badly on the R’s; the public disagreed and it hurt the R’s. The public did not think it was fair, right, a good use of resources, etc. The public simply wasn’t ready (and in Clinton’s case, never would have been.)

    Because impeachment is outside of the judicial process – it is a political solution in a political body – the will of the people really cannot be ignored. If the public is not ready, if the public is not behind it, having the leadership and the public out of alignment for such a major undertaking makes the political climate, the sense of whether politicians are “in touch,” the public interest in politics worse, not better. Yes the investigative process may drive the numbers up – but you still have to be within striking distance. If 45% of the public backed impeachment, the argument might be different.

    The task for pro-impeachment progressives is this: 66% disapprove of Bush, but only 36% want impeachment. Sell the 30% who represent the “impeachment gap” on the idea. Move half of that gap and impeachment will happen – and I’ll be 100% behind it.

  • Cheney is a dominionist, not a uniter. He just wants total control of the earth, moon, stars and planets. Or at least the oil-bearing ones, anyway.

    I sometimes wonder what holds that guy up. He’s had four heart attacks, wears a pacemaker and gets blood clots everytime he sneezes. And yet he keeps going. Could it be a side benefit from selling his soul to Satan? Just wondering.

    /snark

  • What do you mean, “could” and “might” get less popular? Bush is only truly tolerated by the crowd who sport a gun rack in their pickup truck and just love to see America kicking some ass, lobbyists, the Defense Contracting industry and the sickeningly rich. Otherwise, he probably gets a few nervous votes of confidence from people who actually think he’s a useless tool (as he, in fact, is), but are afraid the CIA are watching what their response is or tapping their phone – or that it’s the CIA conducting the poll so as to root out subversives.

    The use of the term “popularity” immediately skews the poll, since those who like Bush do so because he’s a useful idiot who furthers their objectives. That should not be confused with popularity, since it is directly proportional to how much money they’re making.

  • According to Think Progress, Bush still has a higher approval rating than Nixon did, 29% to 24%. The end of Nixon came when even most of his friends couldn’t hold their noses anymore.

    I don’t think that Bush’s 29% figure is likely to fall much lower. The Republican dead-enders are dug in deep.

  • “Bush is only truly tolerated by the crowd who sport a gun rack in their pickup truck and just love to see America kicking some ass, lobbyists, the Defense Contracting industry and the sickeningly rich.” – #4

    I.e., the established American power structure.

  • Re: #3, he’s the stuff you make bad sci-fi villians out of. One could easily see him doing evil in an episode of Doctor Who.

  • Re #7: The Master had far more class than Cheney.

    And was a snappier dresser.

  • Zeitgeist is right about impeachment. It’s divisive and the dems do not have enough seats in Congress for it to go anywhere. Which ties into what Steve said a few days ago: Dems should just hammer the electorate over the head for the next 16 months with the fact that Nov. ’08 is the voters opportunity to vote the GOP OUT allowing a more democratically controlled Congress to actually get things done. Otherwise, unless this point is driven home that the GOP are the obstructionists, not us Dems, there could be a “vote them all out” mentality.

  • Quayle v. Cheney [Insert hunting joke here.]

    I suspect Quayle’s numbers stemmed from the fact the didn’t do anything except serve as a DEW that the ReThugs know how to pick idiots. You can’t approve of something if it doesn’t exist.

    Cheney’s numbers likely arise from active disapproval of the things he does or is suspected of doing.

  • Anyone not supporting impeachment is just not as informed as well as they should be. If a special prosecutor were assigned to investigate Bush/Cheney so much corruption would come out that nearly everyone would come on board with impeachment. Once the wall of secrecy comes down this administration will be indicted.

    Cindy Sheehan stated she thought those impeachment polls were way too low and I agree based on the fact I meet few people who don’t support impeachment. What’s weird is I never get polled and don’t know of anyone who does so who are they polling?

  • I’m pretty sure that if Dems held some hearings about how the Bushies lied us into Iraq we would see the impeachment numbers crest 50%.

    It was already true back in 2005, and it would be even more true today.

    By a margin of 50% to 44%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

    The poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,001 U.S. adults on October 6-9.

    The poll found that 50% agreed with the statement:

    “If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him.”

    44% disagreed, and 6% said they didn’t know or declined to answer. The poll has a +/- 3.1% margin of error.

    Among those who felt strongly either way, 39% strongly agreed, while 30% strongly disagreed.

    http://www.democrats.com/bush-impeachment-poll-1

  • Zeitgeist,

    Consider the Clinton impeachment. I think the Republican strategy was to use impeachment to club him into resigning, since I don’t think conviction in the Senate was ever that likely. And, in fact, once conviction was widely seen as impossible, much of the wind went out of their sails.

    I think the same thing would happen with Bush. I just don’t see the Senate convicting him, and that will be taken by Republicans as an exoneration — which we’ll continue to hear about for the rest of our lives. (That, and that impeachment was failed “payback” for Clinton.)

    So I don’t see impeachment as winding up anywhere good, either. Better to continue to investigate the hell out of them, keeping up the fight on multiple fronts.

  • #12 – Since pollsters rarely have samples larger than 1,000, and since there are 300,000,000 Americans, the probability of being an American who gets polled would be 0.00000333…, so it’s no mystery you haven’t run into one. The fact you and I face such odds says nothing about the truth-value of such polls.

  • Just to make clear: I think there is a very good chance that impeachment would be successful unless the Bush administration succeeds at running out the clock. But I also think that getting a 2/3rds vote to convict in the Senate just isn’t gonna happen. And by the time impeachment articles are voted, the public will probably feel that, since the election is less than a year away, they may as well run out the clock.

    And the right-wing noise machine is just too firmly entrenched — it will blot out the sky with a not-guilty/Dem-payback-for-Clinton message.

  • zeitgeist,

    That move backfired badly on the R’s; the public disagreed and it hurt the R’s.

    While I agree with your overall sentiment, and with idlemind’s last sentence especially, can you elaborate on the above comment? How much did it hurt the Rs? And why didn’t that hurt have longer legs. I presume you argue that the GOP lost some House seats in 2000 (is this true?), but they sure didn’t hurt at the polls in 2002 or 2004.

  • Wouldn’t it be possible for the House to hold hearings into whether or not there exists enough evidence already in the public sphere to suggest that officials in the Administration have committed crimes in leading the country to war in and justifying the continued Occupation that rise to the level where impeachment would be justified?

    No need to supoena new evidence, just put everyone who has resigned or been fired from the Regime in the last 6 years on the stand and let them vent some spleen/cover their asses explaining their past statements and actions. By the time it gets round to calling on the holdouts still within the Regime to testify they’ll have probably spent so many weeks or months loudly demanding the right to put their side of the story that they won’t be able to flip/flop and hide behind Executive Privilege.

    Structure it right, and just watch those numbers in favour of impeachment rise and rise and rise as the real story of how America ended up in this predicament is laid out for the public to mull over. The GOP are already working with the corporate media to pin the blame for ‘losing’ Iraq on the Democrats, because they know full well that, when it eventually does implode beyond the ability of a broken army to hold the line, Americans really are going to want someone to blame. It’s just human nature.

    Every day the Democrats in Congress spend not aggressively making the case that the GOP did this to America and should be held accountable is a day longer for the MSM to sell the meme that whoever calls time on the Occupation has to accept at least some of the blame for its failure. And they will sell it, because they don’t want to talk about their own complicity in keeping it going.

    Sitting tight and waiting for 2008 to deliver them the White House and a solid majority before they go for the throat of the GOP is a damned risky strategy for the Dems in my view. By then the MSM will have already framed the post-Bush era as one where any attempt to fight the fights of the the previous Administration will be smeared as partisan and vindictive.

    And the GOP will surprise no one at all when they claim to be non-partisan moderates America is crying out for by virtue of never, ever talking about the previous 8 years under any circumstances.

  • In theory,

    If Little G’s disapproval numbers go up by just .25 of 1% per month between now and November 2008 he will be at 70% Disapproval.

    A new world record; it will fit right next to his world record for the most executions by a governor ever.

  • Edo –

    In the 1998 elections (after the House had already initiated impeachment), the R’s lost 6 seats despite strong historical trends against the party of the Pres in the second mid-term. Exit polls showed impeachment was much of the reason. In 2000, despite Bush winning the Presidency, R’s still lost a few more seats in the House. Similarly, in 2000, despite Bush’s win, the R’s lost 4 in the Senate (in 1998 the Senate race was a draw, but again this was contrary to historical trends – and among the R losses was raving loudmouth D’Amato and fringe-winger Faircloth).

    Why didn’t the hurt have longer legs?
    (1) Clinton did questionable things on the way out the door that helped the R’s reassert the moral high ground (Mark Rich comes to mind);
    (2) Gore foolishly ran away from Clinton, separating the post-Clinton Democratic party from his high approval numbers and his 8-years of relative peace and properity;
    (3) The media decided to stick it to Gore and paint him as the less honorable of the two, despite his opponent being an AWOL coke head;
    (4) 9/11/01 cut short any remaining legs the hurt would have had – and remember, Bush’s numbers were trending down as of 9/10.

  • bjobotts said, “Anyone not supporting impeachment is just not as informed as well as they should be. If a special prosecutor were assigned to investigate Bush/Cheney so much corruption would come out that nearly everyone would come on board with impeachment. ”

    That insult is wrong on its face. People who are perfectly well informed and who are absolutely equal in terms of hating what Bush is doing and wishing he were gone are on both sides of this particular issue.

    Under present circumstances, Senate Republicans won’t vote to convict. I’m all for a special prosecutor, but note that for a successful removal by impeachment, we would need a lot of favorable procedural votes in the senate, not to mention many unlikely judicial decisions.

    For Clinton’s impeachment, Reno had to agree to an expansion of Starr’s investigation – would Gonzales do the same?

    The judiciary had to rule against Clinton’s claims to executive privilege, and against Clinton (and Bush I) with respect to Secret Service agents being forced to testify, and against a claim to attorney-client privilege with respect to Vince Foster – would the current Supreme Court majority likewise rule against G.W. Bush?

    I’ll agree that the present Democratic House and its Judiciary Committee are probably every bit as capable now as the Republican house was then of pushing through impeachment hearings and voting forward articles of impeachment, and that the House investigation was quite far-ranging and unearthed a lot of stuff that was harmful to Clinton, so this part of a Bush impeachment could be well worth the effort. Thirty-one Democrats joined the Republicans supporting a broad investigation.

    However, the most important point here is that there is nothing that impeachment hearings in the House can produce (other than voting actual Articles of Impeachment) that regular investigations can’t also provide. Impeachment hearings are expected to culminate in a timely fashion (a month or so), whereas no one is put out if committee hearings go on forever. Heck, Waxman could reasonably be following calling White House personnel in to testify on one thing or another all the way through the 2008 election.

    So where are we if the House digs up some dirt and moves to impeach, which is what happened with Clinton? Next the senate had to vote to move forward on the trial, on how long the trial should be, and on whether to call witnesses. None of those would pass today’s Senate, given that Cheney can break ties, Johnson is still out sick, and Lieberman is not a Democrat.

    The Senate compromised on 3 days of presentations for each side. This did not amount to an investigation so much as an attempted documentation and rebuttal of claims

    The Chief Justice presides over the trial. Do you expert Roberts to be at all even-handed here?

    The senate had to vote to bring in Lewinsky for lengthy questioning, but the process pretty much ensured that nothing new was learned. Republicans in the senate were able to push through a decision to seek additional depositions from Lewinsky, Vernon Jordan, and, once more, learned pretty much nothing of consequence. The Republicans next won a fight against “sunshine” (conducting depositions in public). Next they won a fight to release selected portions of the testimony to the public. Then they won a fight to keep final deliberations closed to the public. This was all basically a fight over influencing public opinion. After every last advantage going to the Republicans, the best they could do was a 50-50 failure on one count, and only a 45-55 vote on the other, with 10 Republican senators joining the Democrats.

    If Republican stalwarts are calling for impeachment and for anti-Bush decisions in the Senate, it would be a whole new ball game, but absent that Bush is not going to be removed by impeachment. More likely, an attempt at impeachment will revitalize opposition to the Democrats, and a failure to win impeachment will encourage Bush-type behavior in bad future presidents of both parties. Keep investigating, and try to make the Republicans appalled, discouraged, and hugely unpopular.

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