Newsweek: Bush in the Basement: Popularity Sinks Lower Than Carter

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/21/07 at 3:39pm

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Marcus Mabry
Newsweek

Updated: 11:49 a.m. ET June 21, 2007

June 21, 2007 - In 19 months, George W. Bush will leave the White House for the last time. The latest NEWSWEEK Poll suggests that he faces a steep climb if he hopes to coax the country back to his side before he goes. In the new poll, conducted Monday and Tuesday nights, President Bush’s approval rating has reached a record low. Only 26 percent of Americans, just over one in four, approve of the job the 43rd president is doing; while, a record 65 percent disapprove, including nearly a third of Republicans.

The new numbers—a 2 point drop from the last NEWSWEEK Poll at the beginning of May—are statistically unchanged, given the poll’s 4 point margin of error. But the 26 percent rating puts Bush lower than Jimmy Carter, who sunk to his nadir of 28 percent in a Gallup poll in June 1979. In fact, the only president in the last 35 years to score lower than Bush is Richard Nixon. Nixon’s approval rating tumbled to 23 percent in January 1974, seven months before his resignation over the botched Watergate break-in.

[more at link]

Newsweek: How Low Can He Go?

Updated On: 6/21/07 at 03:39 PM

[Mother's Younger Brother]

Posted: 6/21/07 at 3:59pm

And Nixon only had to break ONE law. I guess our standards have changed.

[WOSQ]

Posted: 6/21/07 at 4:06pm

One of the many things we learned from Nixon and Watergate is that the sitting President will have an approval rating of about 25% no matter what. Look at the polls when Nixon resigned.

So when I see an approval poll of 25% give or take, my brain says that this is really zero.

[Another thing we learned back then, but unrelated to polls: the more adverbs used to deny, the greater the probablity that the denier did it. For example, if someone says, "No, that is not true", there is a larger probability that it is not true than someone else saying "This is totally completely irrevocably false". Listen to denials and remember this maxim.]

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/21/07 at 4:11pm

And all Nixon botched was a break in. Bush botched a war.

[DottieD'Luscia]

Posted: 6/21/07 at 4:22pm

The only way his numbers will increase is when he and Cheney get the boot.

[WOSQ]

Posted: 6/21/07 at 4:22pm

Nixon botched a lot more than a break-in. Bush has just botched...utterly.

Nixon was tempermentally unsuited for the Presidency, but no one, even people who hated him, could deny that he was a man who had much brilliance. His was a classic tragedy of a man with tragic flaws that eventually brought him down.

Bush is not brilliant, nor does he attract brilliant people around him. His flaw, not even classically tragic, is that he is in over his head and doesn't know it and/or cannot admit it.

In both cases, it was playing fast and loose with truth that has been their downfall.

It isn't the scandals that get the Administrations. Its the cover-ups. "I did not have sex with that woman."

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 6/21/07 at 11:27pm

That's really gotta hurt people who hold Carter up for malicious ridicule.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/22/07 at 12:01pm

[Auggie27]

Posted: 6/22/07 at 12:57pm

And weren't these polls taken before he vetoed the stem cell bill? I've no doubt even Nancy Reagan wants to bitch slap him for that. I did savor the letters in the times today, all but one of which called him on the hypocrisy of his "all life is sacred" so-called "stance" (playing to base posturing). The man who presided over more executions in Texas than any other governor is hardly, definitively "pro-life" or sees all living beings as "sacred." This clinging to a group of cells -- which can be disposed of anyway -- is just bizarre and disengenuous.

By the way, you never hear the "Christian" right denounce in-vitro fertlization, even though in-vitro produces, via the much-loathed "science" (as opposed to two naked Caucasians mating after a bite of an apple in the garden of Eden) mechanically created children. And embryos are discarded routinely through in-vitro procedures.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 6/22/07 at 4:33pm

As loathesome and repulsive a man as Nixon was, with his record of trampling the constitution that he was sworn to protect, he did have some real achievements to point to; That is, for all the evil he did, he also did good.

Bush has nothing in the plus column. And, he (and Cheney) are committing constitutional felonies that would have made Nixon balk.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 6/22/07 at 5:18pm

I am shocked by this news!

Really, I am!

I mean, he was doing such a great job these last 6 years...

I just don't get it.

[Andrew Lowe Watson]

Posted: 6/23/07 at 9:45pm

Keep going, America. You'll get there.

[pab]

Posted: 7/23/07 at 1:58pm

"According to a new American Research Group poll, just 25% of Americans approve of the way President Bush is handling his job as president and 71% disapprove. These are record lows for the survey.

When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 23% approve and 73% disapprove."
Bush Hits 25% Approval

[PalJoey]

Posted: 7/23/07 at 2:01pm

It's beginning to look a lot more like impeachment...

[The Boy From Ohio]

Posted: 7/23/07 at 2:16pm

One can dream...

[JustAGuy]

Posted: 7/23/07 at 2:29pm

I don't think impeachment is in the cards for him. With us already in an election cycle, I don't think the Democrats will want to do anything that might garner sympathy for Bush. At this point his bed is made, let him wallow in it.

I think a bigger challenge for the Democrats and one that will push them towards a win at the polls is to find a way to get the troops out of Iraq.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 7/23/07 at 4:13pm

West Hollywood just became the 80th city to pass an impeachment resolution. These types of grass roots actions may be symbolic, but do have a cumulative cultural weight, even if they don't push Pelosi and Reid forward. We have to take satisfaction in the country waking up. Waking up angry, the best way to open those peepers. Maddenly late, but we'll take it (and no, I didn't for a minute include West Hollywood among those I indict for being comatose these past 7 years).

Updated On: 7/23/07 at 04:13 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 7/23/07 at 4:29pm

"Cumulative cultural weight..."

I like that.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 7/23/07 at 4:30pm

What I can't understand....who are those 25% who still approve of this idiot?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 7/23/07 at 4:31pm

PapaLovesMambo--would you like to field Joe's question?

[SNAFU]

Posted: 7/23/07 at 7:14pm

Somehow the image of Jimmy Carter doing the "Stirring the Pot Happy Dance" keeps popping to mind and makes me giggle.