Truman was unpopular, so Bush feels vindicated

December 9, 2006

The president has done some post-election tinkering, but the public isn’t impressed. His support, which was low before, keeps dropping further.

The national job approval rating of President Bush has plummeted to 30%, an all–time low in the latest Zogby International telephone poll, sinking below the 31% approval rating he dropped to in early June.

The President’s positive job rating is down from 36% in late October, in the weeks heading into the congressional midterm elections. Since then, the Democrats swept to control of both houses of Congress, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned and was replaced by Robert Gates, who said the U.S. is not winning the war in Iraq. Release of the Iraq Study Group’s report calling for significant change in the way the U.S. is conducting the Iraq war came as this latest Zogby poll was in the field.

All of Bush’s friends appear to have largely given up on him. His support among Republicans is down to 60%, among evangelical Christians he’s at 43%, and among men he’s down to just 31%.

I’d like to think that maybe some of the White House’s recent partisan maneuvering — Bolton, right-wing judges, Tomlinson, etc. — had something to do with this, but I know better. Iraq has destroyed Bush’s presidency and has drained his support.

Perhaps the more disconcerting point, however, is that the president doesn’t care.

This is not to say that Bush is above day-to-day poll-watching, but rather, that the president has convinced himself that he’s right and will be vindicated by history. That was the message yesterday when top Democratic congressional leaders met with Bush at the White House to talk about the future. It didn’t go well.

Instead, Bush began his talk by comparing himself to President Harry S Truman, who launched the Truman Doctrine to fight communism, got bogged down in the Korean War and left office unpopular.

Bush said that “in years to come they realized he was right and then his doctrine became the standard for America,” recalled Senate Majority Whip-elect Richard Durbin, D-Ill. “He’s trying to position himself in history and to justify those who continue to stand by him, saying sometimes if you’re right you’re unpopular, and be prepared for criticism.”

Durbin said he challenged Bush’s analogy, reminding him that Truman had the NATO alliance behind him and negotiated with his enemies at the United Nations. Durbin said that’s what the Iraq Study Group is recommending that Bush do now – work more with allies and negotiate with adversaries on Iraq.

Bush, Durbin said, “reacted very strongly. He got very animated in his response” and emphasized that he is “the commander in chief.”

So, Bush is like Truman, except for the stuff Truman did that the president didn’t like, and Bush is unconcerned about his historical legacy, except for the inevitable vindication that he’ll receive from the history books.

Only 772 days left….

CB: Perhaps the more disconcerting point, however, is that the president doesn’t care.

what the hell /does/ he care about apart from his huge percentage of holiday time and flying all over the damn country at US taxpayers’ exepense?

  • W’s gone in full brat mode now. He’s jammed his fingers (or Cheney’s) into his ears screaming “LALALALALALALA!”

    It ain’t pretty behavior for a 2 year old let alone the Prez of the US.

    I agree with rimone. I wanna see a full blown temper tantrum on national TV (as long as the Nucular Football is somewhere far far far out of reach.)

  • Truman’s approval ratings weren’t simply about Korea — they’d already sunk to the mid-30s by February 1950, months before hostilities erupted there.

    But they sunk further, into the low 20s, during the Korean War not because the American people thought Truman was pushing too hard on the war, but because they thought he wasn’t doing enough. They thought Truman had been caught off guard by the communist menace and wasn’t fighting back hard enough. While MacArthur was not-so-quietly advocating for dropping 20 to 30 nuclear bombs on the Chinese mainland and bringing in the Taiwanese forces to make it a full-blown World War III, Truman was trying to keep it a police action.

    Look at Truman’s ratings in April 1951, when he finally removed macArthur from power. That’s when he bottoms out at 24, where he lingers for a while, before creeping back up to the mid-30s when the war’s finally stalemated and people are looking for a way out. (Eisenhower’s campaign promise to “go to Korea” was like Baker and the ISG; people wanted a way out by then.)

    All in all, Bush is completely misreading the polls. Truman suffered in popularity not because he took a hardline foreign policy with the enemy of his time, but because he didn’t take a hard enough line. Bush’s case is precisely the opposite.

  • Some, like Truman, are unpopular because they made difficult decisions in anticipation of the overall direction of history (e.g., the Truman Doctrine, racial integration of the armed forces) with advice of truly knowledgeable advisers (e.g., George Kennan).

    Others, like the Shrub, are unpopular because the public is at long last coming to realization (without the help of its watchdogs in the press) that it has had two elections stolen from it, has squandered a fortune and countless lives on Bush’s desire to appear as Commander in Chief, has an administration that is a global embarrassment, and is now threatened by a level of terrorism never dreamed of before it took office.

  • Yeah, and Marie Antoinnette was unpopular too and all she wanted was for folks to have some dessert. Ratings schmatings. What’s that saying? … an idiot savant is never welcomed in his homeland, or something like that.

  • While I’m scared when I read it, I’m pleased to see that at least some of the media have decided its OK to portray His Majesty as a petulant, delusional lunatic.

    Recently we’ve heard about the incident with Webb at the reception, now we have another enticing scene from trailer to The Madness of King George 2: Iraqi Boogaloo.

    The trailer is a grabber, but I’m worried the movie has a very, very violent ending, not suitable for children OR adults.

  • biggerbox, as you know, if the media had done their damn jobs and portrayed our mega-moronic preznit the way we saw him way back when, we wouldn’t be where we are now.

  • CB: Perhaps the more disconcerting point, however, is that the president doesn’t care.

    No. . the more disconcerting point is that almost 1 in 3 Americans still like how he is handling his job.

  • Bush is entering his “persecuted Christian” mode. The more unpopular he becomes, and the more people criticize him, the more certain he is doing God’s work.

  • I can imagine a scenario like Nixon in the fall of 1973 where they got rid of Agnew first and put in a consensus VP, and then the following summer they got rid of Nixon. (Agnew went down on a kickback rap dating from his Maryland governorship days, I seem to recall, and Nixon resigned when threatened with impeachment and conviction.)

    I’m sure that in a few months the Dem’s would find plenty of Repubs who will be more than happy to do the same: Cheney goes first, then Bush…

    Of course, we would have a consensus Repub in the White House and who might that be???…dunno if the Dem’s really want to dilute their chances in 2008, but can we really hold on that long???

  • BTW…did anybody see Dubya’s old man blubbering during his address at some convocation honoring Jeb???

    Ostensibly, the tears were all about Jeb’s leaving office…but I get the feeling that George the Elder truly understands the Shakespearean dimensions of the tragedy that he and his cronies so adroitly enabled when they foisted his idiot son on the nation back in 2000…

  • “The survey of 982 likely voters nationwide was conducted Dec. 5–8, 2006, and carries a margin of error of +/– 3.2 percentage points.”

    Which means his number may be TWENTY-SIX POINT EIGHT.

    8/10th of a percent from where Nixon resigned.

    Btw, the whole reason for the Truman namedropping is that Boy Wonder wants to drop a nuke before he leaves office. Maybe two.

    Why should Democrats have all the fun?

  • BTW…did anybody see Dubya’s old man blubbering during his address at some convocation honoring Jeb???

    Ostensibly, the tears were all about Jeb’s leaving office…but I get the feeling that George the Elder truly understands the Shakespearean dimensions of the tragedy that he and his cronies so adroitly enabled when they foisted his idiot son on the nation back in 2000… — ricardo, @14

    I’m not always amused by Maureen Dowd, but she really let rip on the subject today. Well worth reading if you have access to NYT’s Times Select (behaind paywall, alas)

    http://select.nytimes.com/2006/12/09/opinion/09dowd.html

  • “Bush, Durbin said, “reacted very strongly. He got very animated in his response” and emphasized that he is “the commander in chief.””

    That’s the one-liner that President PissyPants has left. The Preznit is a petulant spoiled brat. Send him back to Crawford!

  • One similarity is that just like Truman is known for implementing the Marshall Plan for western europe, Bush is known for his Plan for post-Katrina New Orleans.

    Not.

  • I’d like to know who is the idiot who keeps suggesting the Truman comparison to BG2.

    I’ll note one other thing that links Truman to BG2. That’s the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company vs. Sawyer case. Which sets the three part test of Presidential Authority:

    Highest, Acting with Congressional Approval;
    Medium, Acting in the abscence of Congressional Action;
    Lowest, Acting against clear Congressional limitation.

    And that’s the ruling that BG2 and Gonzales are trying to undermine with their warrantless wiretapping program, torture and military commissions.

    So I suppose it’s no wonder BG2 compares himself to Turman. All the “unitary and imperial executive” think tank theorists will have that on their mind. They can’t cite the actions of Richard Nixon after all. 😉

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