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Jewish World Review April 15, 2005 / 6 Nisan, 5765 A happy face on a gloomy second term By Clarence Page
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
A politician should have three hats, the poet Carl Sandburg once said: "One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected." Judging by the polls three months after President Bush's inauguration, he is keeping a happy face, but quietly looking for rabbits.
As he celebrated his re-election in November, Bush told reporters that he earned political capital and he intended to spend it. But polls are showing that Bush's approval ratings and presumably his political capital have evaporated, almost as quickly as the budget surplus he inherited the beginning of his first term.
Although Bush received 51 percent of the vote in November, only 44 percent of Americans approved of the job Bush is doing in a poll released last week by the Associated Press and Ipsos-Public Affairs. Fifty-four percent of those polled disapproved of the job he was doing.
And if, by now, you are one of those readers who is warming up your fingers to send me a fresh "Bush won! Get over it!" message, save your fingertips. Bush's dip appears not to have come from liberals, Democratic partisans or chronic Bush-haters.
It appears to be coming from a mixture of loyal Republicans and disenchanted independents who are less than enthused about his domestic agenda. A lot of folks who voted for Bush as a statement against "Hollywood immorality" and "gay marriage" apparently are not pleased to discover they also were voting for private retirement accounts, relaxed immigration enforcement and congressional intrusion into a family's private and painful right-to-die dispute.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released the same day as the AP poll found that 32 percent of Republicans opposed Bush's proposal to let workers invest part of their payroll taxes in the stock markets.
Half of Republicans and 55 percent of independents opposed the president's proposal to grant legal status to some illegal immigrants residing in the United States.
Like most of the country, 39 percent of Republicans said that the court-ordered removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was the right thing to do, despite emergency efforts by Bush and Congress to have it reinserted, while 48 percent said it was wrong.
Although 87 percent of his fellow Republicans approved of his job performance overall, about 18 percent said they lost respect for Bush after he butted into the Schiavo family dispute.
Iraq, the war on terrorism and making Americans feel safer were central themes of the 2004 presidential campaign, but recent hard-won successes in the long, painful process of democratizing Iraq actually may have nudged the war and other foreign policy issues to the back burner in many minds. On the front burner are the bread-and-butter issues that touch Americans and their pocketbooks.
But Bush gets off easy in recent polls compared with that other perennial target of abuse, Congress. Approvals for the Republican-led Congress in the AP-Ipsos Poll dropped to a measly 37 percent from 41 percent in January. Congressional Democrats found little to gloat about as their approval ratings were about the same as Republicans.
Backlash makes Congress nervous, which explains Bush's continuing road trips across American to sell his Social Security plans. His problem? He's a lame duck. Since he can't run for president again, Bush can spend political capital more freely than Congress.
As most members of Congress will face midterm elections next year— and Bush will be an even lamer lame duck after that— he needs to get ambitious-yet-controversial ideas, such as his Social Security proposals, passed this year.
Regarding Bush's proposed Social Security reforms, Democrats reasonably respond that the looming Social Security crisis is decades away, if then, while the growing woes of Medicare and Medicaid are headed toward a financial train wreck in the next few years. It's an argument they appear to be winning.
Sooner or later, Democrats will have to produce some bold leadership if they're going to reverse their losing streak in elections.
For now, as Bush tries to salvage his legacy, congressional Democrats seem to be following the old Machiavellian adage: Never interrupt your enemy while he is destroying himself.
Second terms can be humbling.
Yet, when he was asked about his low polls, the president stayed characteristically upbeat. "You can pretty much find out what you want in polls," he said.
Perhaps. But, as Sandburg might wonder, can he find some rabbits?
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Comment on Clarence Page's column by clicking here. © 2005, TMS |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
