His mandate is fading like the chances for Democracy in Iraq.

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From: "Robert Nordlander" <nord@famvid.com>
To: <gartland1@hotmail.com>
Subject: Back by unpopular demand
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 11:01:00 -0600


----- Original Message -----
From: Dave Eisemann

Back by unpopular demand
Come next month, Bush's Inauguration Day approval ratings may be the
worst of any president in modern-day history.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Eric Boehlert

Dec. 21, 2004 | Republicans like to brag about the sweeping mandate
that President Bush received on Election Day. But as he prepares for his
second term, Bush approaches Inauguration Day with historically weak
job-approval ratings, according to a series of new opinion polls. Unless
there's a dramatic turnaround in public sentiment between now and Jan.
20, Bush will be sworn in to office with the lowest job-approval rating
-- barely 50 percent -- of any president in the last 80 years, or since
modern-day presidential polling began.

"It's striking how weak he is right now," says presidential historian
Richard Shenkman, editor of George Mason University's History News
Network. "You'd have to go back to Woodrow Wilson to find a president
who was reelected in a position as weak as this one. There's been no
euphoria around Bush's win."

Since his 3-percentage-point win over Sen. John Kerry, Bush has
experienced a complete lack of bounce in the polls. In fact, in at least
one national survey, Fox News' Opinion Dynamics poll, conducted Dec.
14-15, Bush's approval rating has fallen five points in the last month,
to 48 percent. In other polls, including Washington Post-ABC, NBC/Wall
Street Journal, Pew Research Center, Associated Press-Ipsos, Zogby, and
Gallup, Bush's already soft approval numbers have flat-lined since the
election. That phenomenon stands in sharp contrast to U.S. history, when
presidents voted into office for a second term, even after close
elections, routinely have received robust approval ratings.

According to an analysis posted on the Gallup Web site in mid-November,
Bush's current 53 percent approval rating "is actually the lowest of any
of the last seven presidents who won a second term in the first poll
conducted after their re-election." Right after securing their second
terms, Bill Clinton received a 58 percent approval rating, Ronald Reagan
61 percent, Richard Nixon 62 percent, Lyndon Johnson 70 percent, Dwight
Eisenhower 75 percent, and Harry Truman 69 percent.

Not only is Bush's 50 percent approval rating dismal for a two-term
president, it's arguably the worst for any president about to be sworn
into office. The only other modern-day president with such shaky
approval ratings immediately following an election win was Reagan.
According to a January 1981 Gallup poll, his job approval rating stood
at just 51 percent. (Since Gallup began polling in 1937, Bush and Reagan
are the only two presidents to take office with job approval ratings
that low.) The difference between Reagan and Bush, though, was that
Reagan's disapproval rating at the time was just 13 percent. Today,
Bush's negative rating hovers in the 40s. "His high disapproval numbers
are astonishing," says Shenkman.

To date, the press, busy detailing the mandate that conservative
Republicans feel they won in November, has taken little notice of Bush's
poor showing. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal noted that its "survey
shows Mr. Bush in a middling position a month after besting John Kerry."
(Rather than "middling," the Journal could have just as accurately opted
for "unprecedented.") And this week, as it salutes Bush as its Person of
the Year, Time magazine makes only passing reference to the president's
unmatched showing in the polls.

As for what's weighing down Bush's poll numbers, it seems clear that the
ongoing chaos in Iraq is a major culprit. Since Election Day alone,
nearly 200 American servicemen and -women have been killed in Iraq, as
violence continues to spread throughout the country, 19 months after
U.S. forces first invaded. According to the latest Gallup poll, 33
percent of Americans think things are going "very badly" in Iraq, a new
high-water mark for that response. Meanwhile, the embarrassment over
Bernard Kerik's aborted nomination as secretary of homeland security, as
well as the controversy over post-9/11 intelligence reform that some
renegade Republicans tried to block, likely added to Bush's
post-election woes.

It might seem natural for a president who just won a bitter and
exceedingly close election to suffer from soft poll numbers, considering
so many people voted against him. But Americans, up until now, have
traditionally rallied around the Election Day winner, no matter how
close the vote. For instance, in 1948, after Truman unexpectedly won
reelection by edging out Republican Thomas Dewey, his weak job-approval
ratings suddenly shot up to 69 percent. (Like Bush, Truman won
reelection despite having a Gallup job approval rating below 50 percent
just prior to the election.)

Following the 1960 election, President John Kennedy, winning an even
closer race over Nixon, enjoyed an even larger post-election bump in the
polls. After just one month in office, Kennedy saw his job-approval
rating jump to 72 percent.

That kind of embrace by voters was not limited to the simpler age of
American politics that predated a 24-hour news cycle. Even in the wake
of the bitterly divisive 2000 election, when the Supreme Court had to
step in and declare Bush the winner, the president, just weeks into his
first term, enjoyed a relative wellspring of goodwill. According to a
CNN/Time/Gallup poll in February 2001, Bush's approval rating stood at
57 percent, compared to just 25 percent who disapproved.

It's also telling to examine the approval gap in recent presidents.
According to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 60 percent approved of
Clinton's performance at the time of his 1997 inauguration, compared to
38 percent who disapproved. Fast-forward to 2004 and Bush's approval
gap, according to NBC/Wall Street Journal, stands at a microscopic five
points; just 49 percent approve, while 44 percent disapprove of his
performance in office.

That's why, come Inauguration Day, George W. Bush will likely make
history as the least popular president to ever take the oath of office.


- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Eric Boehlert is a senior writer at Salon.

-----Original Message-----
From: mowhunn [mailto:no_reply@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 12:21 AM
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Nimby Noyb" <philengr@p...>

Poll shows most Americans now think war was a mistake

By Alec Russell in Washington

(Filed: 22/12/2004)

President George W Bush's post-election honeymoon came to an

abrupt end

yesterday as it emerged that, for the first time since last year's
invasion, a clear majority of Americans believe the war in Iraq is

a

mistake.

Before the news broke of the devastating attack on a US military

base in

Mosul, a Washington Post/ABC News opinion poll found that 56 per

cent of

Americans thought that, given the cost in American lives, the war

was "not

worth fighting."

A slender majority think the invasion of Iraq has contributed to

the future

security of America, but 70 per cent believe that the 1,300 dead US
soldiers are an "unacceptable price".

The growing disillusionment is not leading to pressure to pull out

the

150,000 US troops in Iraq. Nearly 60 percent of Americans support

keeping

them there until "civil order is restored."

But the findings puncture the mood of invulnerability and

triumphalism in

Republican circles since Mr Bush's election victory last month.

Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, also received a sober

reminder of

how his stock has slumped. The Washington Post poll found that

barely a

third of Americans approved of his job performance. Even among

Republicans,

only six out of ten polled want him to stay in his post.

In an article in USA Today Mr Rumsfeld sought to defend himself by
suggested the army he inherited in 2000 was still steeped in the

ways of

the Cold War and that the problem was not a lack of troops but of

the right

sort of troops: military policemen and civil affairs specialists.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that FBI agents have accused the

military of

placing lit cigarettes in Iraqi detainees' ears and humiliating

Arabs by

wrapping them in the Israeli flag.

His mandate is fading like the chances for Democracy in Iraq.