'If President Bush ever did get a bounce in the polls from the fifth anniversary commemoration of Sept. 11, it has completely evaporated.'
Sept 18: Approve 41%, Disapprove 58%
Sept 17: Approve 41%, Disapprove 57%
Sept 16: Approve 44%, Disapprove 54%
Sept 15: Approve 45%, Disapprove 53%
Sept 14: Approve 47%, Disapprove 50%
Sept 13: Approve 45%, Disapprove 52%
Sept 12: Approve 44%, Disapprove 54%
Sept 11: Approve 41%, Disapprove 57%
Sept 10: Approve 42%, Disapprove 56%
Sept 9: Approve 42%, Disapprove 56%
6 comments:
I can't tell you how disappointed I am in Disney for that crap. Uggg. Yet I'm still wondering just who this 40-some-% who approve him are....
neo-cons and whoever has access to the machines that count the votes.
Suppose that Bush had been the President in 1861:
Following the vicious attack on Ft. Sumter, he rallied the country behind him. And he swore he'd get the perpetrators, 'dead or alive.'
And he seemed true to his words, as not long after the attack he did indeed send the army to war against the South. But when he had Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and the rest of the Confederate leadership surrounded in a mountainous retreat in western North Carolina, he made his first mistake. Instead of sending in the army to finish the job, he contracted with some local Tennessee and North Carolina militia to go in and arrest or kill the leaders. Mysteriously, the Confederate leaders got away.
After that, the President seemed content to leave the war in the South simmering at a low level war of attrition, and moved nearly the entire army to the border with Mexico (carefully avoiding putting any of them in Texas so as to avoid stepping on the toes of people who might sympathize with the Confederacy.)
Now, it is true that the country had won a stunning victory against Mexico a few years earlier, and that since then, Mexico had pretty much been seen as being kept safely 'in a box,' but insisted that Mexican President Benito Juarez was a threat, who was developing weapons with which he could kill large numbers of people at a time. The slaughter years earlier at the Alamo was continually recouted as proof, and the country was whipped up into a frenzy against Mexico, to the point that most Americans north of the Mason-Dixon line pretty much even forgot about the other war. I mean, who could think about Alabama when all the news was focused on what was going on in Hermosillo and how the people there would be so happy to see us.
In the 1862 midterm elections, the President even got the Senate to approve a war resolution against Mexico, so they would ignore all the other problems that were a consequence of half the country not being there.
So we invaded Mexico. And it looked like a smashing success, as the army drove to Mexico city, and Juarez was forced from power. Several months later he was found hiding in a 'spiderhole' in the Yucatan.
But by that time, things were no longer looking so rosy. The Mexican people, instead of throwing roses at us, threw rocks at us. Funny, but they didn't like foreign occupation, which became clear as they began a viscious guerilla war that began to claim the lives of American soldiers. The French, who had considered invading Mexico until we went in, saw how much trouble we were having and decided that Mexico might be a tougher place than they thought, and were glad to have avoided Cinco de Mayo. The new weapons that the President had claimed that President Juarez was developing, were never found. He began looking for excuses why we were there. The next one was to remember the 'forgotten war.' Yes, the rebellion. There in fact had been no Confederates in Mexico before we invaded (other than a small enclave near Texas in an area where President Juarez had no control anyway) but now that we were fighting in Mexico, why those darn rebels were just pouring in their to fight Americans. So that was it!! Even though we had ten times as many troops supposedly fighting Confederates in Mexico as we had fighting Confederates in the Confederacy, yup, Mexico was now, according to the President, the main battlefield in the War against Rebellion.
When it was pointed out that President Juarez when running his own country had been the main block against Confederate infiltration of his country, we needed a new justification. Our better system, that was it! We had to impose American democracy in Mexico. I mean, just look at slavery. Not that the President had ever taken much of an interest in slavery before, but suddenly when he needed a moral imperative, he seized on the issue. If we leave Mexico now, he said, we will abandon it to Confederates and they will turn it into a land of slavery. So we have to fight Confederates in Mexico so we can stop slavery.
The President managed to scare enough people with this to get re-elected in 1864. But as the war dragged on into 1866, and people soured on it and wanted to know why we were still fighting in Mexico, President Bush saw his approval numbers drop. Threatened with the loss of a number of seats in Congress, he suddenly 'rediscovered' the Civil War, and began talking about how important it was to defeat the rebellion in the Southern States....
Yikes. Shake me so I can wake up from that nightmare.
Thanks for the slap on the Disney wrist. Just because "they" are Disney, I think they feel they are beyond criticism.
Polls can change overnight. I think it's a good indication that if Bush were to run again (if he could) he'd lose.
The big issue? Can the Dems come up with a viable candidate AND strategy. It will be a most interesting mid-term election indeed.
It was nice to see that Bill Clinton answered these attacks directly.
Post a Comment