Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign, is on the right track about public perceptions of the president, but he’s woefully behind.
ABC News’ Teddy Davis Reports: In the forthcoming issue of Texas Monthly, former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd writes that President Bush’s “gut-level bond” with the American people “may be lost” and that “wholesale change” is needed in Iraq.
May be lost? Look, this isn’t complicated. Bush is remarkably unpopular. Americans disapprove of his job performance; Americans disapprove of him personally. Asked if they believe the president is honest and trustworthy, nearly 60% of the country says he is not. I’m afraid we’re way past the notion that Bush’s “gut-level bond” with the American people may be lost.
This is all part of a feature in the new issue of Texas Monthly, which asked 15 prominent political figures for their thoughts on Bush’s legacy. Dowd, who was a Democrat before he switched parties to work with Bush, wrote what can only be described as a confusing piece.
As most of us know — and it’s why I switched parties and went to work for him — [Bush] was best at what he did in Texas, which was working with Democrats like Bob Bullock and Pete Laney. The biggest hope and aspiration of those of us who were brought in as former Democrats was that we could make Washington into a place, like Texas, where people could sit down, have a conversation, socialize, not judge one another as good or evil, not question intentions, and actually get things done.
But when all the levers of power in Washington became Republican, creating consensus seemed to become unnecessary at the White House. That hurt him. Now, near the end of his presidency, when many of us thought we would have helped solve the problem of polarization, we’re in an even more polarized place.
There are a few problems with all of this.
Dowd is obviously looking at Bush’s presidency from an insider’s perspective, which may very well be clouded by the “bubble,” but I’m hard pressed to remember the point in which Bush even tried to create a political atmosphere where “getting things done” was more important than political gain. Candidate Bush paid lip service to being a uniter not a divider, but President Bush, after coming in second, immediately got to work burying his political rivals and creating a toxic partisan environment.
And whose idea was that? Right, that would be Matthew Dowd.
In late 2000, even as the result of the presidential election was still being contested in court, George W. Bush’s chief pollster Matt Dowd was writing a memo for Rove that would reach a surprising conclusion. Based on a detailed examination of poll data from the previous two decades, Dowd’s memo argued that the percentage of swing voters had shrunk to a tiny fraction of the electorate.
Most self-described “independent” voters “are independent in name only,” Dowd told me in an interview describing his memo. “Seventy-five percent of independents vote straight ticket” for one party or the other. Once such independents are reclassified as Democrats or Republicans, a key trend emerges: Between 1980 and 2000, the percentage of true swing voters fell from a very substantial 24 percent of the electorate to just 6 percent. In other words, the center was literally disappearing. Which meant that, instead of having every incentive to govern as “a uniter, not a divider,” Bush now had every reason to govern via polarization.
Dowd now argues that he thought he might have a role in helping “solve the problem of polarization.”
Nice try, Matt.