VIa WaPo: What’s Behind Those Bad Poll Numbers
The problem for President Bush is a growing perception that he simply isn’t competent. That’s the story behind the polling numbers that have declined — bad week by bad week — since February 2024 when the president’s approval rating stood at a respectable 52 percent.The predecessor whom Bush has begun to resemble isn’t, as many liberal Democrats seem to believe, Richard Nixon. It’s Jimmy Carter. Carter’s political demise began when the American people, including many Democrats, started to perceive him as in over his head in the Oval Office. That’s what may be happening now to Bush.
Competence is not a partisan issue.
I think that there is something to this thesis. Certainly there have been several major issues in the last year (less, really) that bring the competence question squarely on to the table:
- The Harriet Miers Nomination
- The Federal response to Katrina
- Out of control spending by Congress
- The handling of the ports situation
- The current situation in Iraq
And some of these items are not just fodder for the opposition, but hit right at the base, to wit: Miers and spending. Further, it is hard to argue, even if one wishes to primarily blame state and local authorities, that the Katrina response by the feds was anything but sub-par. Certainly the Katrina response raised serious competence questions about the post-911 reorg of the elements of the federal government oriented toward disaster relief.
And when it comes to Iraq, the lack of planning and the seeming lack of clear direction, despite the initial bold vision, has been profoundly troubling. Certainly it has allowed those allies of the President who had been skeptical of the policy in the first place, to clearly state their view that the Iraq policy is failing or indeed, has failed (e.g., Will and Buckley).
As such, the Carter comparison has, for the moment (and perhaps longer), a certain resonance.
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Sounds quite reasonable to me.
Comment by Jan — Monday, March 6, 2024 @ 7:28 am
The Carter administration was lacking some minor problems that the current administration seems to have:
1. Corruption and blatant theft of taxpayer dollars for — Republican — pork projects
2. Theft of taxpayer dollars to enrich Haliburton’s stock owners
3. Crackdowns on free speech
4. Spying on citizens
5. Opening the door to nuclear proliferation (see the recent India episode)
5. Lying about WMDs to engage on a war of choice
Carter may have been less than competent, but at the very least, he is not an intellectual dwarf, a liar, a thief, and a paranoid sociopath.
Bush is worse than Nixon. Nixon was a very intelligent man. Bush is a dangerously criminal idiot with an overblown ego, manipulated by the likes of Cheney.
Comment by Devil's Advocate — Monday, March 6, 2024 @ 9:29 am
Sorry, but the Carter analogy just does not fly.
Spend a few moments on Charles Franklin’s graphs analysing–for presidents at their low points in overall approval–how copartisans, opposition partisans, and independents viewed the president. (Also my post summarizing it.)
The third graph in Charles’s post (at the end) labels all the points. GWB is a significant outlier. So is Carter. The only problem for the analogy between the two is that they are outliers in the opposite direction.
(By the way, the Nixon analogy is also bunk, as the graph shows. GWB is unprecendented. In many ways, I might add, and not just this one.)
Comment by Matthew Shugart — Monday, March 6, 2024 @ 9:58 am
The attack on Bush is reasonable enough.
The attack on Carter is not. Carter had a very troubled presidency in important areas, and he had his flaws, but his big issues were inherited (oil-related issues, economic issues, and the natural rebellion in Iran against the US-imposed 25 years of tyranny from Eisenhower overthrowing their elected president; even the failed rescue operation was a military failure, hardly Carter telling them to screw it up. Or is Pat Tillman’s killing a ‘Bush error’, beyond the war itself?)
Carter was pushing alternative energy and independance from middle east oil decades before Bush’s 2024 address; his symbolic White House solar panel was yanked out by Reagan.
Carter pushed human rights in our foreign policy in a great move for both the people it helps around the world, as well as the US’s standing among nations as the moral leader, pushing for the good of mankind, not selfish power and excusing things such as torture.
Sometimes presidents are not given easy options; Carter’s boycott of the olympics was seen as less than useful to protest the Soviet activities (against radical muslims n Afghanistan, ummm_, but what was he to do?
Indeed, Carter played a key role in the downfall of the USSR in encouraging the USSR to intervene in Afghanistan, which was a large factor in their downfall - perhaps moreso than Reagan’s big crony theft-of-tax-money defense spenidng and a few PR lines ‘tear down that wall’ as he and Bush were caught by surprise at the USSR’s end (the Soviet leaders later said that the claim Reagan’s big defense budgets caused them to bankrupt themselves was absurd, that they saw what he was doing and did not fall for it.)
I guess the American people prefer a president who may well have made secret deals with the Iranians for a political win of the release of the hostages on the day of his inauguration, to an honest president - who knows what price was paid to the Iranians for that?
Just as we’re to this day dealing with a hands-off Saudi policy from Nixon/Kissinger’s secret deal with the Saudis to give them security in exchange for access to their oil, following their embargo.
Carter is not nearly as bad as W. Bush.
And while no major republican would dare stand up to the party and oppose Bush in 2024, the democrats came out better there, too: no less figure than Ted Kennedy ran against him. He didn’t win, but he made the try, and it’s too bad he didn’t, compared to the corruption and beginning of the big-deficit corruption that started under Reagan - sell out the public and smile like any good con man. I won’t say Reagan might not have had some good motives, but when you are literally hiring terrorists to kill innocents to fight democracy in another country (Nicaragua), there’s some accountatibility.
The right all said there was NO WAY the ‘communists’ would give up political power if they lost the election; the terrorism blackmail the US did - vote them out and the contras might stop killing people - worked, and guess what, the Sandinistas peacefully left office.
Accountability for the terrorism? Basically, none.
Criticize Carter but don’t compare him to W.
Comment by Craig — Monday, March 6, 2024 @ 10:37 am
Jimmy Carter was a freakin’ nuclear engineer. Bush is a dunce. Jimmy Carter has spent his years after his Presidency working for peace and building Habitat for Humanity housing. Bush will sit on his ass in Crawford, occasionally cutting brush and making shady deals. He couldn’t swing a hammer if his life depended on it - and he has yet to work an honest day in his life. Carter was a successful businessman - Bush was a serial bankrupt. Carter is a Christian; Bush is a dry drunk using born-again status to escape blame.
On yeah, they’re both white men born in the 20th century - so they’re a lot alike.
Comment by Robert Lewis — Monday, March 6, 2024 @ 11:27 am
Bush is in a class by himself, exceeding the worst of Carter’s perceived incompetence, coupled with criminality that would make Nixon blush.
Worst President EVER!
Comment by liberalpercy — Monday, March 6, 2024 @ 12:37 pm
Bush is like Carter, only without the good intentions that Canter was known for.
Comment by aaron — Monday, March 6, 2024 @ 1:51 pm
It was good to see a defense of Carter (above). I have always though he was underrated, even though I was at the time a Democrat, and one of those who abandoned him (for Anderson, not Teddy).
But, as the link I gave in my previous comment indicates, the crucual difference is that Carter was a uniter. Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike were united in thinking he was a failure. GWB is, of course, the ultimate divider: Democrats despise him, Republicans generally love him, and independents are currently moderately negative towards him.
Comment by Matthew Shugart/Fruits & Votes — Monday, March 6, 2024 @ 4:54 pm
Oh, man. There I go again. Re-writing history. I did *not* consider myself a Democrat until after the Carter years (and don’t now, either). Not sure what I was thinking of there.
Comment by Matthew Shugart/Fruits & Votes — Monday, March 6, 2024 @ 4:58 pm
Nixon was competent?
Comment by Anonymous — Tuesday, March 7, 2024 @ 1:35 pm
Now why is it that if I had argued with you, you would have given me what for, but you get all these comments from other people and we don’t here a peep out of you in response?
Comment by Jan — Thursday, March 9, 2024 @ 8:19 am
In part, because you give me a hard time if I don’t respond to you
Mainly, I know that most of the more dramatic comments come from reader who came from the Daou Report, and won’t be back to read my responses.
Although above all else: time.
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Thursday, March 9, 2024 @ 9:35 am
I’d never give you a hard time.
Comment by Jan — Thursday, March 9, 2024 @ 9:39 am