Rage of Reason
By Eugene Robinson
Washington Post
It's official: Bush Derangement Syndrome is now a full-blown epidemic. George W. Bush apparently has reduced more of his fellow citizens to frustrated, sputtering rage than any president since opinion polling began, with the possible exception of Richard Nixon.
That should be a pretty good indicator of where Bush will rank when historians get their hands on his shameful record -- in the cellar, alongside the only president who ever had to resign in disgrace.
A Gallup Poll released this week showed that 64 percent of Americans disapprove of how the Decider is doing his job. That sounds bad enough -- nearly two-thirds of the country thinks its leader is incompetent. But when you look more closely at the numbers, you see that Bush's abysmal report card -- only 31 percent of respondents approve of the job he's doing -- actually overstates our regard for his performance.
According to Gallup, if you lump together the Americans who "strongly" approve of Bush as president with those who only "moderately" feel one way or the other about him, you end up with about half the population. That leaves a full 50 percent who "strongly disapprove" of Bush -- as high a level of intense repudiation as Gallup has ever recorded in its decades of polling.
Gallup has been asking the "strongly disapprove" question since the Lyndon Johnson administration. The only time the polling firm has measured such strong give-this-guy-the-hook sentiment was in February 1974, at the height of the Watergate scandal, when Nixon's "strongly disapprove" number was measured at 48 percent. Bush beats him by a nose, but the margin of error makes the contest for "Most Reviled President, Modern Era" a statistical tie.
The Gallup Poll found that among Bush's shrinking Republican base, he has unusually strong support. Independents, though, have joined Democrats in the Bush Derangement Syndrome clinic: They, too, "strongly disapprove" of the job the president is doing.
(Continued here.)
Washington Post
It's official: Bush Derangement Syndrome is now a full-blown epidemic. George W. Bush apparently has reduced more of his fellow citizens to frustrated, sputtering rage than any president since opinion polling began, with the possible exception of Richard Nixon.
That should be a pretty good indicator of where Bush will rank when historians get their hands on his shameful record -- in the cellar, alongside the only president who ever had to resign in disgrace.
A Gallup Poll released this week showed that 64 percent of Americans disapprove of how the Decider is doing his job. That sounds bad enough -- nearly two-thirds of the country thinks its leader is incompetent. But when you look more closely at the numbers, you see that Bush's abysmal report card -- only 31 percent of respondents approve of the job he's doing -- actually overstates our regard for his performance.
According to Gallup, if you lump together the Americans who "strongly" approve of Bush as president with those who only "moderately" feel one way or the other about him, you end up with about half the population. That leaves a full 50 percent who "strongly disapprove" of Bush -- as high a level of intense repudiation as Gallup has ever recorded in its decades of polling.
Gallup has been asking the "strongly disapprove" question since the Lyndon Johnson administration. The only time the polling firm has measured such strong give-this-guy-the-hook sentiment was in February 1974, at the height of the Watergate scandal, when Nixon's "strongly disapprove" number was measured at 48 percent. Bush beats him by a nose, but the margin of error makes the contest for "Most Reviled President, Modern Era" a statistical tie.
The Gallup Poll found that among Bush's shrinking Republican base, he has unusually strong support. Independents, though, have joined Democrats in the Bush Derangement Syndrome clinic: They, too, "strongly disapprove" of the job the president is doing.
(Continued here.)
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