Accidental Blogger

Every day a new poll is published about the plummeting approval ratings of President Bush.  An article in Houston Chronicle asserts that the reasons for this steep decline go beyond Iraq, Katrina, the CIA leak probe or gas prices. According to pollsters and experts, these negatives can at least in part, be ascribed "to a visceral, second-term voter fatigue about Bush’s personality" – his smirk, swagger, inattentive and abrupt body language when confronted with uncomfortable issues etc. Some people have started yelling at their TV’s when Bush is on. (For some of us, it isn’t a second term woe – we’ve been gnashing our teeth for five long years). The article goes on to say that Bush’s support among Republicans remains strong – some polls suggest that it may be as high as 75 – 80%.

That brings me to a recent post by Brian Leiter, "42 % of American Population Still…."  at Leiter Reports, where he questions the "cognitive condition" of the  42 % of Americans who continue to believe in Bush’s honesty and integrity. I think that Professor Leiter is too generous in questioning just their brain and not also their hearts.

Certainly some of these folks are uninformed and perhaps even foolish – but not all. I know several people who make up the 39 – 42 % of Americans who continue to support Bush through his disastrous and dishonest tenure. Some of them are my neighbors. They are educated, well informed and not at all stupid. They realize that things have gone awry on the Iraq front. They have seen the gross incompetence during Katrina. They have watched White House operatives get caught in dangerours and deliberate lies. But they continue to make tired excuses for the failures – the world is better off without Saddam, we are fighting the terrorists "there" so we won’t have to fight them "here", Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco let New Orleans down, Karl Rove has not been indicted, Libby’s lies to the grand jury had nothing to do with lies about the war in Iraq … and so on. But these are just mindless mantras that they don’t themselves believe anymore. The real reason they still support Bush, is that inspite of his total loss of credibility, they believe he can deliver on some other crucial fronts.  They tenaciously cling to the fond hope that in the remaining three years of his lame chickenhawk presidency, he will make enough judicial appointments to overturn (or at least hinder at every step) Roe, relax gun control and environmental protection laws further, make life miserable for gays, cut "wasteful" spending (read benefits to the poor) and most important of all, cut their own taxes further. 

I suspect that among the improbably high numbers vouching for Bush’s honesty and integrity, not all are telling the pollsters the truth. Most likely, the poll result reflects the willful lies of many respondents who must find a way to justify their political support for Bush. Acknowledging Bush’s lack of integrity would mean admitting their own. Unlike the jolly millionaire in Brian Leiter’s post, who can laughingly confess that he just backs the pony which wins him the race, most middle class, church going Bush supporters would never admit such blatantly selfish motives. So they must go on pretending that their favored leader is moral, upstanding, hardworking and honest – exactly what they believe they themselves are.

But who knows? May be I am too suspicious. Perhaps the 42 % indeed are true believers. As for the 42 % (or more) support that Hitler would have chalked up in his dying moments, it is a perfectly plausible scenario. Those who uncritically worship a flawed hero, especially one who tantalizes them with a glimpse of the promised land, are not easily persuaded about his shortcomings – even when all pillars crumble and Berlin (or Baghdad) burns . During the two years I lived in Germany (1981-1983), nearly forty years after Hitler, I met lovely older Germans who confided in me that Hitler had not been "all bad". And they were not talking about the shiny Autobahns or the trains running on time.