What a difference a year makes! For a long time most of the world and a sizeable minority of Americans saw George Bush for what he is. But it took Iraq, Katrina and other disasters to reshape the opinion of the rest of the US. With his overall job approval rating at a dismal 33%, people are now moving beyond numbers – they are using words to describe what they think of Bush as a leader.
"As Bush launched a series of speeches to drum up support for the war, a new round of opinion polls found growing skepticism about Iraq and distrust of Bush. His image declined sharply, with one poll finding "incompetent" to be the most frequent description of his leadership.
Bush’s approval rating dipped as low as 33 percent in one recent poll after a string of bad news for the White House, including uproars over a now-dead Arab port deal, a secret eavesdropping program, a series of ethics scandals involving high-profile Republicans and a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.
"His strong points as a president were being seen as personally credible, as a strong leader. That has all but disappeared," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, whose latest independent poll found a dramatic decline in Bush’s credibility.
A majority of Americans, 56 percent, believe Bush is "out of touch," the poll found. When asked for a one-word description of Bush, the most frequent response was "incompetent," followed by "good," "idiot" and "liar." In February 2005, the most frequent reply was "honest."
"The transformation from being seen as honest to being seen as incompetent is an extraordinary indicator of how far he has fallen," Kohut said……
In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, 61 percent said the Iraq war would be a very important or the most important issue in deciding their vote for Congress. As the third anniversary of the invasion approaches, they preferred Democrats over Republicans in handling Iraq by 48 to 40 percent.
Independent pollster Dick Bennett of American Research Group said Bush’s failure to acknowledge public anxieties added to his troubles. "The biggest problem the White House faces is reconnecting with people. People simply aren’t buying it anymore," Bennett said. "People can see for themselves that things actually are not fine."
But given the unfailing cravenness of the invertebrates in the Democratic Party, I won’t hold my breath for any major gains in November, 2006.
Accidental Blogger 
2 responses to “What Took Them So Long?”
A couple years ago I thought George Bush was an honest, if repulsive and incompetent, buffoon. I now believe Bush to be a compulsive liar and a psychopathic personality. I don’t know if this is because I didn’t really follow politics–at all–until the Democratic primaries when Howard Dean sucked me in, or if it’s because he’s screwed up so much and blatantly lied about it that stuff just comes out and it becomes impossible to overlook, or some combination of the two.
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Bush was always incompetent. He had others do for him what most of us must do for ourselves. Privileged and spoilt, he is said to value loyalty (suck ups) over competence. Then he is given the job of the most powerful person in the world and the guy hasn’t a clue about the world. And when things start imploding around him and NOTHING is going his way, what else can he do but lie in order to justify his wrongheaded policies? Besides incompetence, the other quality he has in abundance is arrogance. A deadly combination.
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