{"id":13646,"date":"2007-11-19T11:10:15","date_gmt":"2007-11-19T16:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13646.html"},"modified":"2007-11-19T11:10:15","modified_gmt":"2007-11-19T16:10:15","slug":"why-nothing-improves-the-presidents-public-standing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/why-nothing-improves-the-presidents-public-standing\/","title":{"rendered":"Why nothing improves the president’s public standing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The WaPo’s Peter Baker has an interesting front-page piece<\/a> today on the president enjoying a few disaster-free weeks. After years of one calamity after another, Bush and his team believe they’ve reestablished their footing. The public, meanwhile, isn’t impressed.<\/p>\n

In many ways, the shifting political fortunes may owe as much to the absence of bad news as to any particular good news. No one lately has been indicted, botched a hurricane relief effort or shot someone in a hunting accident. Instead, pictures from Iraq show people returning to the streets as often as they show a new suicide bombing. And Bush has bolstered morale inside the West Wing and rallied his Republican base through a strategy of confrontation with the Democratic Congress, built on the expansive use of his veto pen.<\/p>\n

Yet none of this has particularly impressed the public at large, which remains skeptical that anything meaningful has changed and still gives Bush record-low approval ratings. The disconnect highlights his dilemma heading into the last year of his administration: Can anything short of a profound event repair an unpopular president’s public standing so late in his tenure?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I really doubt it.<\/p>\n

I think there are four main reasons why recent developments haven’t done anything to improve the president’s poll numbers, and in all likelihood, won’t help Bush in his remaining 14 months.<\/p>\n

1. Bush is trying to put out his own fires<\/i> — Baker noted some good recent news for Bush, including the fact that violence in Iraq is not quite as horrific as it was; there’s been progress on North Korea’s nuclear program; the deficit is falling; and a new attorney general has been confirmed. But what do all four of these have in common? They’re all problems Bush created in the first place through his own recklessness and\/or incompetence. When an arsonist starts to put out some of his own fires, the victims are rarely impressed.
\n
\n2. He’s still screwing up<\/i> — There haven’t been any major<\/i>, new Bush disasters in a few weeks, but there have been plenty of medium-sized ones. For example, he vetoed funding for poor kids’ healthcare and abandoned his own foreign policy in response to Pakistan’s “emergency rule.” Plus, the old catastrophes haven’t gone away — there’s no political progress in Iraq, the economy continues to slow to a halt, he’s still unwilling to work with the congressional majority, etc.<\/p>\n

3. Bush doesn’t have anything new to offer<\/i> — The president’s last two State of the Union addresses were completely devoid of new ideas, and the White House has no policy agenda, so it’s not as if Bush can mount a recovery based on policy proposals Americans will rally behind. He’s become the Veto President, rejecting popular proposals that most of the public would prefer he embrace. Lo and behold, that doesn’t do much for the poll numbers.<\/p>\n

4. It’s too late<\/i> — The reality is, Americans closed the book on Bush’s presidency a while ago. They made up their mind, and they’ve decided the last seven years didn’t work. Everyone’s ready to just move on, which is why there’s more interest in the presidential race than Bush’s latest efforts to screw something else up.<\/p>\n

The underlying point of Baker’s piece seemed to be, “Why isn’t Bush more popular yet?” It’s really not that complicated, but hope springs eternal at the White House.<\/p>\n

“The law of averages is finally turning our way,” said Mark McKinnon, a Bush adviser. “Iraq’s a big part of it.” But it will have to be sustained over months to come to turn around public opinion, he added. “The fact that there’s not substantial movement is not surprising. We have to get through the next part of next year and the [public] will start to look at the presidency through a different prism.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By this logic, as Bush is walking out the door, he might be able to get his approval ratings into the high 30s. What a treat that will be for him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The WaPo’s Peter Baker has an interesting front-page piece today on the president enjoying a few disaster-free weeks. After years of one calamity after another, Bush and his team believe they’ve reestablished their footing. The public, meanwhile, isn’t impressed. In many ways, the shifting political fortunes may owe as much to the absence of bad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}