The slightly-less unpopular president

December 13, 2005

I’m fond of posting updates on Bush’s approval ratings when they’re slipping badly, so it’s only fair to note that the president has seen a slight up-tick in his support over the last few weeks. Perhaps more importantly, it’s worth asking why. (That’s only half-way rhetorical; I’m hoping someone can explain it to me.)

Gallup has Bush at 42%, up from 37% a month ago. The AP has the exact same numbers. The New York Times shows Bush at 40%, up from 35% in early-November. When one poll shows an increase, it’s easier to dismiss it as an outlier. When all of them show a similar trend, it’s probably a reflection of a subtle change.

To be sure, Bush is still remarkably unpopular. Gallup noted that Bush’s support “remains lower than that of any president in his second term since World War II except Richard Nixon.” I know we’re talking about the “we create our own reality” gang, but a 42% approval rating is hard to spin as a good sign. For that matter, the latest Gallup numbers also showed that 43% of the nation said they “strongly disapprove” of Bush’s job performance — which is an all-time high for this president.

Some of the president’s supporters think it’s the series of speeches on Iraq that’s helping to turn things around.

Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster, credits the speeches with helping to nudge up Bush’s overall approval ratings and his numbers on handling Iraq in several recent polls.

“The president needs to continue to reaffirm why we’re in Iraq and what this battle is all about, and make sure the Democrats are not the only ones being heard out there,” Goeas said.

This may have something to do with the up-tick, but I’m not convinced. The public still strongly disapproves of Bush’s handling of the war — according to the New York Times poll, a majority of the country believes the administration “intentionally misled the public when its officials made the case for war” and wants the United States to set some timetable for troop withdrawal, regardless of the president’s arguments to the contrary.

So, what’s the cause of the minor bump? I think Susan Huru, who participated in the NYT poll, offers a hint.

“Things are not that bad,” Susan Huru, a 47-year-old independent from Wasilla, Alaska, said in a follow-up interview after the poll was completed. “I can still afford things except for maybe gas.”

Obviously, this is just one person’s perspective, but I think her comments may be illustrative. To borrow a White House phrase, Bush may very well be benefiting from the soft bigotry of low expectations.

It seems to me that the country has lowered its standards to the extent that the absence of horrible news is enough to give Bush a few extra points in the polls. For many voters, the fact that no Bush administration officials have been arrested in the past few weeks may be a sign that ethics at the White House have improved. The war hasn’t gotten noticeably worse. The president hasn’t badly flubbed a response to a massive natural disaster lately.

When inescapable headlines are reminding the nation that Bush’s presidency is an embarrassing mess, Bush’s approval ratings naturally go into a freefall. But maybe a couple of weeks with no obvious new crises is enough to help turn things around for the president. At least a little.

Update: Or maybe not. A new Zogby poll, released today, shows Bush’s job approval rating slipping from 41% to 38%.

Not so fast! Zogby Poll: Bush approval rating drops again to 38% :via Americablog

  • I’m sure that behind that 5% bump is the great satisfaction amoungst the Bush Administration that they have stopped the erosion of support in their BASE.

    They could not give a damn about what you or I think of them, but they want to have the approval hard core social conservatives who vote Republican if they are not sulking over their King James Bibles on election day.

    With that, they figure they can hold on to enough seats in 2006 to keep Dick Cheney from being impeached.

  • More than anything it’s and end to a very bad short term trend in economic news that centered around Hurricane Katrina. Oil prices and gas prices spiked, and job growth and confidence numbers tanked. Now confidence in the economy is up a bit, Bush goes out trying to take credit, people fear that the worst is past, they take out more money from their housing “equity”, spend it, and feel better about life in general. NOTHING has changed politically at all, so it cant possibly be anything about these idiotic PR speeches on Iraq. Unfortunately, things are going to get worse for the economy as housing tanks, and then the Bush numbers will really hit their low point, which they are nowhere near close to.

  • I also think the bump is based in no small part on Americans short attention spans/memories. Now that the devastation from Katrina isn’t being played on the news on a regular basis, people tend to forget about it and forget about the president’s ineptitude and promises to rebuild…after all, it happened almost 4 months ago…GOSH!
    I bet most people can barely remember who won the World Series or what they had for dessert at Thanksgiving or what kind of skills you need to impress a girl…(White Sox; pumpkin pie w/Cool Whip; nunchuck skills or bowhunting skills or computer hacking skills…gosh!)

  • 1) Gas is down to a mere $2.XX a gallon
    2) Katrina has not been a major news story in a while
    3) Elections in Iraq sound like a good thing
    4) It’s the Holiday season and people are not focused on Bush or the government
    5) As far as shoring up the base, the war (where they were abandoning him) has been filed behind the War on the baby Jesus.

    When the everyone gets their credit card bills after THE HOLIDAYS and Delay goes on trial and 1/2 the new Iraqi parlament is blowup or kidnapped we will be right back in the 30’s.

    Bush is benefitting from a Christmas Spirit bubble.

  • I have got to wonder if dwelling over the sucky federal performance of FEMA during Katrina which hurt him, has less of an impact because post-Katrina rebuilding is no longer on the radar.

  • I say it’s the holidays. Sure shopping is a nightmare, but we all have tons and tons of time off. And when we are working, other people are off. It’s basically a jag-off month.

    Wait until January when all the jaggin-off and spending start to catch up with people.

  • There are elections in Iraq on Thursday and Sunnis are likely to participate in much larger numbers.

    Cheney is taking the heat for the torture policies rather than Bush.

    Bush didn’t condemn Murtha, which looks like he’s downright open-minded compared to a few months ago.

    And Dean’s made it sound as if the only alternative to Bush’s strategy is to declare defeat. That’s great for Republicans.

    Or so it seems to me.

  • This may be the next shock to the system:

    Short of a last minute intervention by Rove’s attorney, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is expected to ask a grand jury investigating the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson to indict Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove for making false statements to the FBI and Justice Department investigators in October 2003, lawyers close to the case say.

  • That’s what I was going to say Andy. Come February, people will be plenty pissed again. A couple extra bucks to fill up the car will seem like small change to heating bills that are $140 bucks higher.

  • My own expert analysis is that it’s a combination of holidays and improving gas prices. For some odd reason, even I feel better with gas prices back somewhere close to where they were. When gas was $3.85/gal here in upstate NY, I was really stressed out.

    I wish I could agree with Rege & others who are primed for the next shock being the one that finally pushes Bush into the 20’s, but my cynicism about Americans and/or Bush’s base is such that the only thing that’s going to knock Bush’s ratings down from the mid- to upper-thirties will be something stupid (at least to us rational people) and utterly out of proportion to the “harm,” like Bush calling Falwell an idiot in public or something like that. It’s always the small, stupid things. And I’d rather have a small stupid thing bring him down than a huge catastrophe where millions suffer.

  • It’s the holiday’s. People are focused on other things and Bush is getting the benefit of the doubt. 2006 is an election year and the media will need to start competing again; for the few advertising dollars still going to them, Also, wait until those credit card bills come in January.

  • Maybe I am just a bit cranky today….

    But since most Americans voted Bush back into the presidency despite his stupidity… who really gives a fuck what they think?

    And yes….since I still being cranky…

    Am I the only one that noticed that when the Pope pooped on gays the story got major corporate media coverage, but when he pooped on runaway Christmas consumerism the media absolutely ignored him?

    Corporate media can really bend over itself and lick its own ass… can’t it?

  • From the same Brian Williams interview cited in two other articles today:

    “We’ve added 4.5 million new jobs since April of 2003. Home ownership’s at an all-time high. Small businesses are flourishing. I mean, this economy is good. And it’s strong.”

    It must be those 4.5 million new jobs only he knows about.

    But seriously, WTF? Where on earth does he get these ridiculous numbers? And how can he possibly have the impression the the economy is strong, when it’s at best just beginning to pick back up?

  • My “mainstream Republican” friends have scandal fatigue. It has finally sunk in that the guy they thought was going to change history IS history. They don’t like to think about how they were conned, with massive federal deficits, loss of liberties, a party taken over by radicals and fundamentalists, and a tired MSM that is unreliable and evasive. “Heckuva job, Brownie,” was their eye-opener, Harriet Miers was confirmation and they’re pretty darn skeptical of everybody and everything close to this utterly failed President. They’re numbly going about their business, pretending the emperor has clothes and hoping it doesn’t get worse. The next big blunder, like Rove’s indictment, or a horrible State of the Union, and 30% is a possibility. And that’s not even counting how frustrated traditional Repubs are about their guy getting them into quicksand in Iraq.

  • Rian Mueller – the jobs number is right, but
    it stinks. This is only 150,000 a month, about
    what the increase in the labor force is each
    month. Should be much higher during a
    recovery period. Much, much higher. The
    MSM, naturally, are not pointing this out.

    Anyway, it is a trend, and I agree with those
    who’ve said it’s the lack of bad news lately
    that has caused it – that, and the American
    affliction of galloping amnesia. Only a
    constant pummeling of disastrous news
    keeps this guy’s poll numbers down. You
    gotta keep the pressure on or he floats back
    up to the top.

    Worst president in history and the Americans
    can’t seem to remember it for more than a
    week or so without constant bombardment.

  • well, the jobs number is sorta true, meaning that from the lowpoint in spring, 2003, we’ve added 4.5M new jobs.

    BUT, from the start of bush’s time in office, we’ve added roughly 1.8M jobs, total, and when he was pushing for the 2003 tax cut, Bush said that it would produce 5.5M new jobs between July 1, 2003 and December 31, 2004, so here we are, 1 year later, and 1M jobs short.

    not that brian williams would know any of this. honest to goodness: what do news anchors do all day? certainly not inform themselves on the issues.

  • The other thing with those numbers – while the home ownership rate is up, you really have to think about the meaning of the word “owner” – the reason this rate is up so much is that more people now have an option to buy the home they live in. If you put zero down and pay interest only, sorry, you dont own squat. And many many people today are in that boat (which will slowly sink). The job figures, also, are appallingly weak for this point in a recovery. We have gained about 4.4 mil jobs since Apr 03, which is about 140k a month, which is below labor force growth. The fact that the unemployment rate is so low is basically because it is calculated using a different survey, which has a much much smaller sample, and is well known to be rather unreliable. The other reason is that the job market mostly stinks, is overwhelmingly supported by the housing bubble (nearly half those 4.4 mil jobs are housing related – construction, finance, brokerage, etc) and many workers are no longer looking, which means they dont count as part of the labor force. Here;s how it unravels. The slowing of the housing market is underway. As price growth shrivels, the investors bail (already happening) then the interest only borrowers get nervous, but of course, they all cant sell at once. But as price growth stops, when the $1 trillion in adjustable loans adjust in 07, and the interest onlys turn to interest and principal, you sell at a loss, or you get foreclosed upon. When price growth stops, equity withdrawal dries up, and with it consumer spending. THen the corporate world pulls back, cuts more jobs, housing bubble related job growth goes into reverse, and we spiral down. No tax cuts, or interest rate cuts will save us this time. This is what we have wrought with the Bush/Greenspan solution to the “recession” of 2001. Just wait and see what his poll numbers are in a year.

  • Wow, I guess I was hoodwinked by the 4.5 million number. That does come out to 140,000 per month, less than the growth of the labor force, which is more in line with the average of the monthly job growth figures I hear in the news every month. (On some boards it’s a monthly exercise where the Bushies claim any number above zero as a great success, and the rest of us have to remind them that 1) anything less than 150,000 is actually falling behind, and 2) those numbers always get revised, and typically for the last few years, the trend is to revise down. One month I think was particularly entertaining, the revision chopped 90% off the job growth figure.

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