Thirteen
days later, on September 9th, a Washington Post-Gallup poll gave him
somewhat better stats - 55% approval and 41 disapproval, but the polling
by the Post and Gallup showed that the unfavorable view of Bush in
September actually had increased by10% increase from August.
What
these surveys suggest is that eight months into Bush's controversial
ascension to the presidency he was already wearing thin his welcome with
the American people. This was at a time when his relations with Congress
were tense and Democrats had regained control of the Senate.
Despite
Bush's success with his tax cut bill, he was in a public fight over stem
cell research, followed by education, immigration and the question of the
Social Security "lockbox." And he was simultaneously pressing
for a retrogressive domestic agenda.
After
the shocking assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Zogby
showed Bush's popularity soaring to 82% positive and only 17% negative.
The Washington Post-Gallup poll had Bush even higher in the eighties.
From
then on -- really until this year -- Bush maintained a plus rating with
the American people, almost solely tied to 9/11. Like America's mayor,
Rudy Guiliani, who on 9/10 had been one of the most unpopular leaders ever
of New York City, Bush was elevated to political nobility by Bin Laden
kamikazes.
The
image of Bush fighting back - something, by the way, which any American
president would have had to have done under the same circumstances or he
certainly would have faced impeachment - allowed Bush to catapult over the
failures of his first eight months, and push forward an agenda that, under
other conditions, might have been rejected as reactionary.
And,
in 2002, despite a threadbare domestic record, Bush was able to increase
Republican margins in the Congressional elections.
In
2003, of course, he launched his war on Iraq, despite outright opposition
by the UN, his inability to find weapons of mass destruction, his lack of
success in connecting Hussein to Al Qaeda, the looting and mayhem that
followed Saddham's downfall, and the insurgency that sprung up thereafter.
Then,
in 2004, he won the narrowest re-election race of the modern era, once
again with relentless Rovian appeals to 9/11. His fear strategy enabled
him to overcome a first-term record that was actually hurting him among
the electorate, accounting for John Kerry's close finish.
For
Bush had turned Clinton's surplus into a massive debt, gutted
environmental regulations, enacted an unwieldy Medicare prescription bill,
ducked national health insurance needs, weakened mine safety regulations,
reduced scientific research funding, ended trust-busting, and deepened
American poverty.
And
his foreign policy record was hardly better, renowned mainly for its
repudiation of global treaties which the US had once supported and its
shift toward unilateralism that frayed relations with all of our allies
around the planet.
Today
Bush is in deep trouble in the polls.
He
has gone downhill since February 2005, when his favorability rating last
stood above 50%. His positive numbers now hover between 34-40%.
His
collapse follows the disasters he mishandled, including the increasingly
vicious Iraq war, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the botching of the
Katrina hurricane, the Social Security and Medicare calamities, the
controversial Dubai port deal and others.
But
what must be especially disheartening for him is that his ratings even in
his own party are now 10-15% lower than his previous level of support.
All
of this suggests that George Bush is returning to what he was always
viewed as before the 9/11 catastrophe - namely a mediocrity.
George
Bush, without Bin Laden, would almost certainly never have been reelected
president in 2004. With the passage of almost five years since 9/11, and
the calming of emotions from 2001, the American people are beginning to
view the Bush presidency for what it really has always been - one of the
most inept and feckless presidencies since that of Millard Fillmore.
