Politics: More Americans angry at Bush
Published March 01, 2004
I do not hate George W. Bush. Why am I making such a declaration? The issue recently arose in regard to a progressive blogger who has prepared a fine series of inquiries into Bush's economic policies. During a discussion of his motivation, I learned distaste for Bush's policies can be mistaken for personal animosity. So, again, I don't hate Shrub. The worst I wish him is being voted out of office. And, oh, maybe chronic hemmorhoids.
That said, it does appear that millions of Americans are angry with the man.
WASHINGTON (AP) - In Arizona, Judy Donovan says she feels desperate for a new president. In Tennessee, Robert Wilson says he finds the president revolting. In Washington state, Maria Yurasek says she'd vote for a dog if it could beat President Bush.
A subtext to this year's presidential campaign is the intense anger that many Democrats are directing toward Bush, an attitude that has been growing in recent months.
``I've never seen anything like it,'' says Ted Jelen, a political science professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. ``There are people who just really, really hate this person.''
Fully a quarter of Americans - mostly Democrats - tell pollsters they have a very unfavorable opinion of the president, more than double the number from last April. When only Democrats are polled, more than half report they feel that way.
Further, in exit polls conducted during Democratic primaries, a sizable chunk of voters have been describing themselves as not just dissatisfied with Bush but outright angry - 51 percent in Delaware, 46 percent in Arizona and New Hampshire, 44 percent in Virginia and Wisconsin.
In my experience, people become angry with persons in leadership positions when they believe the leaders have deceived them or manipulated them. In regard to Bush, I believe there was a reservoir of ill will from the beginning because of the way he landed in the White House. The thousands of voters disenfranchised to guarantee him a 'win' in the state his brother governs still have the sympathy of many fair-minded people. Though the Supreme Court of the United States is directly responsible for that miscarriage of justice, it is Bush who benefitted from it. To diffuse the bad smell from the election, Bush would have had to engage in major bipartisan outreach. He didn't.
A major pollster sees a variety of factors contributing to the contempt some feel toward the man.
``They really have a head of steam up against Bush,'' said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. He said the level of political polarization surrounding Bush, the division between Republicans who favor him and Democrats who don't, exceeds even that for President Clinton in September 1998 during the impeachment battle.
``It's the long view of Bush in the minds of Democrats,'' said pollster Kohut. ``He came into office in a way that they felt was unfair. They gave him the benefit of the doubt and rallied to him after the 9-11 attacks for some time, and then he disappointed them in the way he dealt with Iraq'' and by pursuing a more conservative course than they expected.
- Politics: More Americans angry at Bush
- Published: March 01, 2004
- Type:
- Section: Politics
- Writer: Mac Diva
- Mac Diva's BC Writer page
- Mac Diva's personal site
- Spread the Word
- Like this article?
- Email this
Save to del.icio.us
Comments on this articleComments
I agree that now that we've stepped in it (Iraq) we can't just leave as that would compound the error.
But MD is right in saying that even some "moderate Republicans and independents, as well as Democrats, are also questioning whether the Bush administration's policies there are sound."
It's not exactly a ground-swell yet, but we still have a few months until November :-)
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/13264)
In fact,I'm not at all that surprised that Bush is vehemently disliked by some people. If you recall the Anti-Clinton forces were equally visceral in their distaste for Clinton.
I think that there currently exists a distinct and growing polarization of political opinion in the United States, one that increasingly forces political debate into a radicalized and marginal state by pushing both political parties and the voters into "all-or-nothing" positions.
The reality is that Bush is not the embodiment of ultimate evil and neither was Clinton. Both political parties and the general polity itself do themselves a disservice by marginalizing arguments in that manner. It pushes the debate into absolutism, erodes the middle ground that is often necessary to progress on many of these issues, and generally contributes to the growth of voter apathy and disassociation. Not for nuthin' does the US rank extremely low in voter turnout...
As for your passing comment regarding Iraq "gradually becomes to resemble an occupation moreso than a liberation", I think it is an accurate statement in so far that yes, it is an occupation, most sensibly an occupation. It should be an occupation. For a time.
I think that after having "liberated" Iraq, to abandon it post haste to chaos and civil war would have been abrogating the US's responsibilities to that nation in the most profound sense of the word. Whatever you think of the current administration reasons for perpetrating the war, once instigated, the US has a clear responsibility to ensure that the vaunted "freedom of democracy" doesn't vanish down the rabbithole.
Whatever you think of Bush et al, I doubt that many Iraqis would trade the current state of affairs for another 20 years of Saddam-style governance....