Bush’s slipping support

July 20, 2005

Public opinion polls have not been kind to the president since, well, the election last fall. Just within the last week, we’ve seen data that shows Americans no longer seeing Bush as “honest and straightforward” (WSJ), no longer approving of his job performance (AP-Ipsos), and very skeptical about the White House role in the Plame Game scandal (ABC).

Making matters worse (or, if you’re not fond of the president, better), two new polls published late yesterday show Bush’s support eroding even further.

Gallup has consistently given Bush stronger support than other polls, but even Gallup’s latest data shows Bush slipping to 47%, which is the lowest in any Gallup poll during his presidency.

Among his two-term predecessors, the president looks to be in bad shape. As of July in their fifth year in office, previous Gallup results put Bush near the bottom for public support. Eisenhower had a 64% job approval rating at this point in his presidency, Reagan was at 59%, Clinton 56%, Truman 49%, Nixon 44% (during Watergate) and Johnson 42% (at a low point in the Vietnam war).

Gallup’s analysis added, “Broadly speaking, presidents who have had similar quarterly averages to Bush’s most recent one did not show much improvement going forward….”

And then there’s the latest from the Pew Research Center.

Americans have growing doubts about President Bush’s honesty and his effectiveness, according to a poll taken at a time people are uneasy with the war in Iraq, uncertain about the economy and nervous about the terrorist threat.

Half of those in the poll taken by the Pew Research Center, 49%, said they believe the president is trustworthy, while almost as many, 46% said he is not. Bush was at 62% on this measure in a September 2003 Pew poll and at 56% in a Gallup poll in April. One of Bush’s strong suits throughout his presidency has been the perception by a majority of people that he is honest.

Bush’s job approval in the Pew poll was 44%, with 48% disapproving.

Will the Supreme Court nomination change this? In the short term, it’s highly unlikely. Congress is going out of session next week, the overwhelming majority of Americans have never heard of John Roberts, and confirmation hearings are a ways off. If Bush is looking for a rebound in public support, he’ll have to look elsewhere.

Maybe a Bolton recess appointment will help. snerk.

  • Yeah, maybe people are finally starting to realize that he was never a popular president, that 9/11 was like the economic bubble of the late 90’s that had computer programmers buying new houses and BMWs, only to be carrying their lunches to work a few months later. Paper-earnings they called it. Throughout his presidency he’s never done anything to unite the country, only playing to the worst elements of his “base”.

    Kind of like all his business failures before, got in on the name, lost the game when people realized he was an idiot.

  • Reminds me of those scenes in the Indiana Jones movies of Indy scrambling to duck underneath a lowering stone gate — the way to increase suspense is, you show it moving down and then you move it up again and show a different shot showing it moving down the same field, do that a few times — therefore it takes forever for it to reach bottom, giving us more time to watch Indy scramble.

    Bush’s rating is like that — it goes down, down, down — and is now at 47%. What?

  • I am SO looking forward to him being out of office. Living in Texas, I will have endured his idiocy for 15 years. 7 as Governor, then 8 as President. It’s been tough having the court jester as a “leader”. We just need to make sure that Jeb doesn’t get in there… or the nephew waiting in the wings. We wouldn’t want the US to start looking like a monarchy would we?

    As in Alex’s comments about business failures, it’s too bad the voting public didn’t look at his business failures before electing him. When he became our first MBA candidate, his business dealings should have been part of the national dialogue, but unfortunately they weren’t.

  • Could the president’s low approval and honesty ratings hurt the Roberts nomination? We have a president most of us don’t like or trust nominating someone to the Supreme Court a very short track record and a very quite past. I’m not sure nominating a stealth candidate for justice gives the American public more faith in the prez or in his motives.

  • Alex says,

    “Kind of like all his business failures before, got in on the name, lost the game when people realized he was an idiot.

    Dude, you’ve got to give a *snark warning* before you come out with something so dead-on accurate yet creully hilarious. I almost choked on the plum I was eating!! 🙂

  • I share Martin’s view. I’ve been hearing down, down, down
    for weeks, but somehow the numbers don’t seem to change
    that much, and he never seems to reach his lowest levels,
    at least in most polls. And in the ones that he has, it doesn’t
    seem to be so down, more like up from the others (the
    47% in Gallup).

    In stock market parlance, we’d say he’s reached a certain
    support level, and is bouncing around just above that level.
    That’s how it looks to me. No significant change for some
    time, except possibly in trustworthiness. And still pretty
    high on the terror front.

    My point is that I don’t see much chance of changing the
    direction of this country, unless he really nosedives.

  • I’ve been waiting for this to happen for a long time. I think the Rove thing, the Social Security charade, and the rising death toll in Iraq have finally caught up with him. The London bombings (which I’m sure the WH thought would be a boon) have just illustrated that all the money and lives being wasted in Iraq have done absolutely nothing to make us or the rest of the world any safer (which most of us knew before we invaded). It has also highlighted the fact that we have done virtually nothing to make our homeland more secure, cutting key personnel and programs while we spend billions on a useless, illegal war.

    A note to kanopsis: 1) I feel your pain…I can’t imagine having to stomach this guy twice as long as the rest of us, and 2) my sister works with a couple who are on the board of a cancer survivor non-profit with George the 1st and Bar. The couple (who are very liberal, unbeknowst to the Bushes) has been in attendance at a few events hosted by G & B in Kennebunkport and say that when relaxing around the house, the family refers to GHW as “41”, W as “43” and Jeb as “44.” Isn’t that cute? Fortunately, I think W has probably screwed little brother out of his seat on the throne.

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