How low can he go?

March 16, 2006

The other major national poll released yesterday afternoon came by way of the Pew Research Center. The NBC/WSJ numbers were bad, but the Pew numbers are worse.

In the aftermath of the Dubai ports deal, President Bush’s approval rating has hit a new low and his image for honesty and effectiveness has been damaged.

How bad? Pew pegged Bush’s approval rating at a stunning 33%, which is the lowest level of support the president has received in any national poll to date.

The poll shows all of the relevant numbers political observers expect (Bush’s handling of Iraq, terrorism, the economy, etc.), but what I like about the Pew report is that it also gauges support for the president’s personal and professional qualities.

* “Strong leader“: The image of Bush as a strong leader that Karl Rove has worked tirelessly to promote has been severely damaged. In July 2005, 55% of Americans said they saw the president as a strong leader. Now, it’s 44%.

* “Able to get things done“: This, too, has dropped to 43%, which is the worst of Bush’s presidency.

* “Cares about people“: Bush has never scored particularly well on this question, but now he’s down to just 42%.

* “Trustworthy“: Down to just 40%.

* “Well-informed“: Further highlighting questions about the president’s competency, only 38% of the public described Bush as well-informed.

* “Good manager“: A new question for the Pew survey, only 35% of poll respondents said they see Bush as a good manager. So much for the CEO president.

But the most compelling part of the Pew survey was when Americans were asked to describe the president in a single word. Respondents volunteered answers, and were not offered words to choose from. They had some interesting responses.

A year ago, the top three responses were “honest,” “good,” and “integrity,” in that order. Now, the top three are “incompetent,” “good,” and “idiot.” (A close fourth was “liar.”)

For a while, I’ve seen and heard Bush critics asking, “When is the public going to realize how awful the president is?” I think it’s fair to say, we’ve reached that point.

A year ago, the top three responses were “honest,” “good,” and “integrity,” in that order. Now, the top three are “incompetent,” “good,” and “idiot.” (A close fourth was “liar.”)

People thought W was a “good” Prez with “honor” and “integrity”? A YEAR AGO??? People honestly believed this??? I’d like to know who Pew was polling.

  • Oh what I would have given to be a respondent in this poll! Which single word would I use to describe George W. Bush? It might have taken hours to decide from among a lengthy list I’ve been building for about six years.

    How about any one of these:

    Liar, Nincompoop, Puppet, Murderer, Indifferent, Incompetent, Opportunist, Evil, Shithead, Assface, Satan, Ne’er Do Well (is that one word?), Motherfucker, Godless, Charlatan, Vaccuous, Vapid, Dumbass, Ham-fisted, Blind, Oblivious, Manipulative, Confused, Moron, Soulless, Crotchface, Hack, Loser, Do-nothing, Turdblossom, Shit-eating, Nero, Arrogant, Smirking, Snickering, Worthless, Warmonger. I could go on. How about three words? WORST. PRESIDENT. EVER.

    -Chief

  • “Good” is kind of a useless word. Good at his Job? Good spirited? Good morally? Context is everything when you try to discern its meaning.

    On the other hand, the words “Incompetent”, “Idiot” and “Liar” have pretty specific meaning requiring no context.

    Unlike Gridlock, I’m not surprised that positive terms lead last year. It took Katrina to really coalesce the American’s public around one impression of George Bush.

    Be nice if next year the winning word is “WEAK”.

  • Oh what I would have given to be a respondent in this poll!

    You know, I started wondering which word I’d pick if I got called. Chief’s list is pretty impressive. I was particularly fond of “Nero.”

  • Honest George Used Cars
    Bush yesterday selling his drug plan to seniors.

    “When you go buy a car, you know exactly what they’re going to charge you,” he said, drawing laughs _ and then adjusting his remarks.

    “Well, sometimes you don’t know,” he said. “Well, you negotiate with them. Well, they put something on the window that says price.

  • No one said “optimistic”? Bush is a very optimistic man. You can tell by his choice of rugs.

  • You have to wonder what planet 35%-40% of the
    American people are living on. Seriously, I can
    only imagine that the most selfish among the rich
    and powerful approve of what this president is
    doing. That’s probably 5% or less. What in the
    world are the others thinking? What’s the correlation
    between this group and the Bible thumpers? I’d
    really be interested in a profile of this group. Have
    they all been brainwashed by constant bombardment
    from the hate mongers? What’s the story here? No
    objective, rational person could approve of this
    president. He’s an incompetent disaster such as
    we’ve never seen before.

    I can’t imagine an equally incompetent Democratic
    president getting similar numbers. Nothing close, I’d
    bet. No one here would support such a buffoon.

    So, do Democratic fortunes come with the deck stacked
    against them by 33% of the American people? That’s
    the intriguing question. Would these people ever vote
    for a Democratic president under any circumstances?

  • hark, do a google search on bogie OR bogieville OR waumpuscat and then go to all of the Carpetbagger Report results. What you will discover is a 45 year old man too afraid to go in to a Cracker Barrel without a gun and his 80 year old father holed up in his subsidized apartment with old John Birch literature. What portion of this demographic accounts for Bush’s 30% of support-after subtracting out the Country Club Rebs? I can tell you for certain, though an answer maybe coming the the months ahead as Bush numbers continue to plummet and he finally reaches his support floor. Well, we can hope anyway.

    I decided to do the Google seach for you. You can find it here.

  • Actually CB got the wordswrong – the top three are “incompetent,” “idiot” and “liar” – “good” was nowhere to be found on the list.

    So, this means that if you now call him an “incompetent, idiotic liar,” you are standing with the majority of the American People.

    And if you called him a “mother-frakking goddamned worthless sonofabitch” three years ago this month (of course, you might not have used “frakking” back then since it didn’t exist yet), you get to stand tall and proud and say I TOLD YOU SO!!!

  • Hark has an interesting question, which the Pew Poll answered thus:

    White evangelical Christians were solidly behind the
    president throughout his first term in office, but that
    support has waned over the past 15 months. Currently, just
    54% of white evangelicals approve of the president’s job in
    office, while 36% disapprove. Bush’s support has also
    dropped among people who attend church each week or more
    frequently. According to post-election exit polls conducted
    by the National Election Pool, these voters backed Bush over
    Kerry by a 61%-38% margin. But today more disapprove (46%)
    than approve (42%) of his performance.

  • I did a google search on myself and discovered someone who needs to talk less and listen more.

  • No matter how thick; how wide; how complete the blinders worn by BushCo’s support-base are, they eventually—an individual here, and an individual there—experience the need to open their eyes to the light of an honest day. These days, it’s pretty much impossible to do so, without getting whomped square-on in the face by at least two or three of “Bush Junior’s” collection from the GOP version of Pandora’s Box. That might well be the key to dragging these wretched swine out of the Beltway, and back to the fib-farm from whence they came. If more people can be broken free from the web of misconduct and deceit foisted upon the nation by BushCo, then the numbers will continue to flat-spin. But then again, Hitler’s inner sanctum still believed their war was winnable—indeed, some believed they were actually on the verge of their vaunted “final victory”—when the Russian tanks were rumbling into the suburbs of Berlin. The more Bush pretends that things are going well, the further he drifts from the reality of the situation—and the wider that “spark of daylight” gets between all those oversized pairs of blinders….

  • I got my dad in on the one word game. He is even better at it than I. Here are some one-word descriptions from the Father of Chief Osceola:

    … ignorant, pinheaded, Hitleresque, uncaring, unhuman, subhuman, figurehead, fece-faced, dry-alchoholic, burnt-out, Poop-for-brains, stuffed-shirt, empty-suit, marionette, crook, drunk, election-fixing, constitution-hating, wiretapping, sonuvabitch, asshole, shmuck, putz, Anti-Christian, money-laundering, port-selling, hypocritical, funeral-avoiding, grand-standing, Phony-Texan…

    Whew.

  • At what point does Scottie Mac start to draw comparisons to Baghdad Bob and his “we have stopped the infidels outside of the city and their blood will water the desert to the glory of President Hussein” routine? I’m envisioning a nice parody with side by side vid clips of Bag Bob with Scottie saying “The President has plenty of political capital, we expect our agenda to be successful, things are going well in Iraq.”

  • A few co-workers are fond of reminding me:

    a.) One man with Jesus is a majority
    b.) As long as the 33% are the same people who owns the guns, it doesn’t matter.

    Neither of those statements are consistent with the survival of the Republic.

  • Following the lead of Marcus, I did a google search on myself and found this analysis:

    “You are a superior species who should be given unconditional rule over all of time, space and the universe.”

    I was pretty amazed at this until I noticed that it was my mom who posted it. Nice one, Mom. 🙂

    But seriously, these polls are why I question whether Feingold will do all that much damage to the Dems. I saw a headline this morning that said “Feingold Resolution Rallies Bush Base”. So what? It’s clear that there’s very little base left, and it’s getting smaller all the time. Russ is only saying out loud what a large and growing majority is thinking privately. And about time, too.

    Go, Russ!!

  • Isn’t anyone else getting nervous? If Bush’s polls number continue to stagnate, I think we can expect another ‘terrorist’ attack on American soil. That’ll get the sheep back in line, the money flowing, and unsupervised executive powers kicking again – just like ole’ times.

  • Dems also makes me nervous. They don’t know what to do but there is increasing pressure for them to act. The remind me of Barney Fife saying “Don’t make me have to do something brave”.
    Acting without real vision or real courage, but wanting to do something safe and still look like brave leaders.

  • Expanding on Tom Cleaver’s post, I keep wondering when the “Don’t Blame Me, I voted for Gore and Kerry” bumber stickers will appear.

  • Republicans are tanking right and left – that is, the American public is getting to know them; and the Democrats are still wringing their hands over whether to sign on to Feingold’s censure measure or Conyers’ consider-impeachment proposal.

    C’mon, elected Democrats. Shit or get off the pot, damn you!

  • These poll results illustrate how slowly, one changed mind at a time, Bush’s “Ammurican peeple” are getting sick of him…

    My son’s high school history teacher has been a diehard Bush supporter: he voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, and used to defend Bush in classroom debates. But he has changed his tune in the last couple of weeks. Apparently, he’d been getting tired of Bush’s antics for some time, but the Dubai Ports fiasco was for him “the last straw.” He told the class the other day that he “no longer supports” Bush.

    And is it my imagination, or is even Chris Matthews more skeptical these days? (He had the director of WHY WE FIGHT on last night, and let the guy actually talk.)

  • Following on to Rege’s comment, I discovered this while doing other research on the net. For those who wonder about our two “visitors”, Bogie and his welfare-sucking dad Waumpuscat, here’s what a Bogie is:

    “Mischievous but harmless spirits who live in darkness and semi-darkness. They can be found in cellars, barns, attics, cupboards, hollow trees and caves, besides many other of such places. Favorite are places were people store goods for which they have no use, but are reluctant to discard. Hence a dusty attic or a junk shop will invariable harbor a number of bogies. Although they try to move with attempted stealth, their clumsiness betrays their presence with thumps, creaks and scuffles. They amuse themselves by hovering behind a person’s back and thus creating a vague uneasiness, pulling blankets on cold nights and other uncreative mischief. Also they like to spy on people and listen to their conversations.”

    Sounds about right.

  • Tom — Here’s another one that I plagiarized from another website.

    Trolls are large, ugly humanoids, armed with an oversized, wooden hammer. Unfortunately, most of them have really bad aim and continually hit themselves in the head with the aforementioned hammer.

    BTW — Really enjoyed your blog. You’re what I would call a heavy-hitter and your co-blogger falls into the same category.

  • Tom or marcus, I have a question. While I was researching our Trolls-let’s call this research trollology-I encounter several waumpuscats other than our own. All of the occurrences which I found of this name, save one, were clearly southern in origin. The exception was a WWII Army Air Force pilot who had name his plane waumpuscat. The pilot may have been southern but there was no evidence of it.

    Here is my question. Is waumpuscat a traditional southern nickname and if so does it mean or signify anything? I’ve done a number of google search on southern nicknames and come up empty. So fellow trollogists, can you help?

  • rege — I have an acquaintance who plays in a bluegrass band that goes by the name The Wampuscats. If I happen to run into him, and he hasn’t slid too deeply into happy-hour oblivion, I’ll run the question by him. Next week is my Spring break and I’ll see if I run him down then. Figuratively speaking of course.

    woo hoo ~ last mid-term in 2 hours!!!

  • rege — One more thing. Off the top of my head, I think that wampus means huge, large, awesome, etc. So that would translate into a cat, like jazz slang, who is awesome or great.

  • marcus, I just did a search on wampus to see what I could find. What I found was the Legend of the Wampus Cat. Here is a bit from that site,

    Cats have always been associated with evil. Tales of witches almost always include a black cat, and if a black cat crosses your path, it is considered bad luck. If you ever meet up with a Wampus Cat, I’d say it’s almost certainly bad luck.[…]

    The Wampus Cat has been a part of East Tennessee, as well as Kentucky, Virginia, and much of the Appalachians, for a very long time. In fact, longer than white settlers have been in the area. It was known as Ewah to the Cherokee, and was known for it’s ability to drive people crazy.

    Well, we can be sure that our waumpuscat aspires to the standards of this mythical beast.

    I did find one other possibility. Wampus, without the Cat, is a French comic book character. I think we can rule out anything French as Claude’s inspiration for his nom de trolling.
    Don’t drink too much green beer today

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