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Thursday, November 03, 2005

35 and counting

So you’ve been reading around on the liberal blogs, and you’re all excited that George Bush is down to a 35 percent approval rating.  I agree, it’s really something: he is approaching Nixonia, the land Tricky Dick charted when he plummeted from 51 percent in January 1973 to 27 percent in January 1974.  And as Josh Marshall points out, “once you get down below, say, 40% you’ve really, really gotta earn every new lost point on the way down.”

The comparison with past two-term presidents in their fifth year is pretty juicy, too:

Clinton 57
Reagan 65
Nixon 27
Eisenhower 58

And there’s more!  As CBS News points out,

Both Reagan and Clinton endured scandals during their second terms. In January 1998, when facing questions about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, President Clinton’s job approval ratings actually rose, reaching the low 70s, and remained at least in the 60s throughout the rest of that year. President Reagan’s job approval rating dropped by more than 20 points to 46 percent in November 1986, just after public disclosures about the Iran-Contra scandal.

So 35 percent may not quite be Nixonia, but it’s a border country.  Call it Dubyastan.

But dedicated readers of this humdrum blog know that here at michaelberube.com, we don’t just look at polls.  No, friends, we go inside the polls—so far inside, actually, that we come out the other end.  And this time, in our journey through the center of the poll, we found this intriguing item (some scrolling required):

EVANGELICALS’ INFLUENCE ON BUSH’S DECISIONS

Too much
Now 34%
11/2003 31%

Too little
Now 14%
11/2004 12%

About right
Now 25%
11/2004 35%

Yes, that’s right, folks—one in seven respondents believes that evangelicals have too little influence on George Bush’s decisions. And that number has risen in the past year. Honestly, when I saw that, I uttered those three little words—W. T. F.?

Well, because I’m aware that the left hemiblogosphere can be an echo chamber where natterers like me talk mostly to interlocutors of like mind, I’ve spent the day interviewing some of those people.  I call them “the gang of fourteen percent.” And what they have to say might surprise you.  It certainly surprised me.

“I just don’t trust Bush,” said Joseph Smith of Provo in a phone interview.  “Sure, he said that Intelligent Design should be taught in science classes.  But he didn’t deliver when it really counted.  He didn’t point out that according to the Book of Hosea, chapter seven, verse sixteen, ‘they turn to Biology, they are like a treacherous bow, their professors shall fall by the sword because of the insolence of their tongue.’ I was waiting for Bush to call down His righteous wrath on the idolators of Evolutionary Theory, and I came away with a handful of nada.  Frankly, I don’t believe his heart is really in this fight.”

Smith’s sentiments were seconded by Amy McPherson of Los Angeles, who told me she wasn’t sure about Bush’s Supreme Court nominees.  “Roberts, Miers, Alito, whoever they are,” Amy wrote via email, “they’re not what I was looking for.  The President just gets up and says he ‘knows’ their ‘heart.’ But he never comes out and says that their heart pumps the blood of the Lamb.  I don’t know what’s wrong with this country, when a President can’t stand up before the American people and testify that a Supreme Court nominee has been washed in the blood of the Lamb.  In the meantime, I’m praying for the death of John Paul Stevens and the nomination of James Dobson.  But I’m beginning to lose hope.”

Perhaps most compelling was Richard Elieu of Louisville, who abandoned Bush after the revelations of the torture scandals of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.  “That did it for me,” Rich said to me over CB radio.  “When I saw those photographs and read those reports, I just broke down and cried.  Everyone knows you’re supposed to convert the heathen as you flay them or boil them—it’s been standard practice for centuries.  But here we have a President who seems to have forgotten what torture is all about.  I don’t know where we went wrong, but I do know that the President needs to pay more attention to what we’re really trying to tell him.”

It sounds to me like Bush has some work left to do if he wants to convince his base that he’s listening to the right people.  Because otherwise, the next stop on this line is Nixonia.  All aboard!

Posted by Michael on 11/03 at 10:38 PM
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