Tomorrow, when you sit down for your Thanksgiving meal and your crazy right-wing uncle says something like, “Well, at least I can count on Bush to tell us the truth,” you can safely say, “You’re just about the only person who thinks so.”
New poll results published by today by the Wall Street Journal show that nearly two in three Americans believe the Bush administration “generally misleads the American public on current issues to achieve its own ends.” That’s a whole lot of people who look at the White House and assume those inside are dishonest.
The partisan breakdown is just as interesting.
Q: “Do you think that the Bush administration generally provides accurate information regarding current issues or do you think they generally mislead the public on current issues to achieve its own end?”
All adults: 32% generally accurate, 64% generally misleading
Democrats: 7% generally accurate, 91% generally misleading
Independents: 25% generally accurate, 73% generally misleading
Republicans: 68% generally accurate, 28% generally misleading
There are a few ways to look at this data, but I found the Republicans’ response the most noteworthy.
This poll suggests the Republican rank-and-file have turned on Bush in fairly significant numbers. For five years, and particularly throughout the president’s first term, Bush could count on stellar support among self-identified Republicans. His approval rating from people within his party was routinely no less than 90%, no matter what the current circumstances.
And yet, as of now, more than one in four Republicans more or less assumes the administration is misleading the public about issues of national significance. The 68% of Republicans who say the information from the Bush gang is generally accurate may sound like a strong base of support, but it’s much lower than it was and far from where the president needs it to be if he’s going to recover politically.
It also underscores the inherent challenge involved with some kind of comeback. Bush and others in the White House can try and spin their way out of their current predicament, attacking their critics and pointing to their hard-to-identify “achievements,” but if a strong majority believes the information out of the administration is consistently not true, it’s going to be exceedingly difficult for Bush to build trust and convince the public to support him.
Tell that to your uncle.