The Economist - Time to worry for George W. Bush

[question everything]

For six months, conventional wisdom in Washington, D.C., has held that President Bush's popularity is more buoyant than you would expect considering the political pounding he has taken on Iraq, the number of jobs lost in his presidency and so on. Republicans everywhere have taken comfort in the fact that John Kerry's lead in the polls, when it has existed at all, has been a fairly small one. But what if that wisdom needs to be turned on its head? What if the president's numbers were weaker than you would have expected considering the amount of good news he has enjoyed?

Over the past few weeks, the economy has been roaring back. Bush has won international support for handing over sovereignty in Iraq. The funeral of Ronald Reagan was a week of respectful observance for the last sword-wielding, tax-cutting conservative. Bush has spent $100 million on advertising, much of it aimed at Kerry's solar plexus. Yet Kerry is still in the lead, and Bush's poll numbers seem to be going through the floor.

If you put all the bad news together, you can make an argument that Bush is in real political danger. That does not mean he is inevitably going to lose; there are still four months to go, Kerry is still unproven and most sane people still think the race will be extremely close. Yet if Kerry were to win in November, mid-June is likely to be seen in retrospect as the point where the president began to lose the White House.

The most striking finding in a new poll by The Washington Post is that only 39 percent of respondents are willing to describe the president as honest and trustworthy, while 52 percent describe Kerry that way. Republican optimists will argue that this is just an aberration. But there are grounds for thinking this finding is rooted in real political events: in the administration's confident assertion that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; in its insistence that the abuses in Abu Ghraib prison were caused by a few bad apples; in its claim that the cost of last year's Medicare reform bill would be $400 billion, not (in reality) $550 billion.

Trust is essential for good government. It is also the quality Bush stressed above others to distinguish his administration from Bill Clinton's. He is in danger of losing voters' trust.

More..

Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040627/news_mz1e27bushec.html

[struggle4progress]

1. America awakes: "only 39 percent .. describe .. president as honest"

:)

[stilpist]

2. I guess you can still fool 39 percent all of the time. nt

[struggle4progress]

3. Some are not fooled but corrupt. Some are single issue voters. Etc.

We are not looking at fools alone here, but some combination of campfollowers, opportunists, conservative idealists, and so on.

I doubt if 40% of my countrymen are fools. There may, however, be that many with whom I cannot hope to talk politics for more than a half minute.

[sofa king]

4. Think of how stupid the average person is...

...and realize half of them are stupider than that. -- George Carlin

[struggle4progress]

5. I don't think the average person is stupid.

The average person is overworked and underpaid and is busy with life's details. Moreover, the sort of political slogans, by which many of us live our lives, tend to be decades out of date, having been developed to describe conditions that no longer exist. As progressives, our task is not to insult ordinary people, but to understand the conditions that govern their lives and to reach out to them productively.

Of course, the Carlin quote really is hilarious! :)
But it's no basis for political analysis and strategy.

[Jeff in Cincinnati]

6. The "average person" has been served a diet of bullshit...

Let's look at the term "transfer of sovereignty" that has been repeated ad nauseum by virtually every major news outlet. Unless you spent a good deal of time digging in to the issue -- which most people don't do -- you'd think that the U.S. was handing over the reigns of government to the Iraqi people this week. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but when ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, NBC, The New York Times, the Washington Post and Clear Channel Radio are all saying "transfer of sovereignty" at the top of each newscast and in each frontpage story, it's easy to see how people would think otherwise.

As long as the media persists in repeating White House talking points and not doing their jobs, the American people will believe the outrageous lie du jour that comes from Karl Rove and the Republican Spin Machine.

[struggle4progress]

7. Yes. That's part of the problem. eom

[belle]

8. And some get confused by polls; and some don't like to say anything bad

about the President. the last boy scouts.