November 1, 2005
AS IF IT WERE A POPULARITY CONTEST:
With Alito nod, Bush already is ahead (James P. Pinkerton, November 1, 2005, Newsday)
An analogy can be made to Bush's favorite president, Ronald Reagan. In November 1986 the Iran-Contra scandal broke. Reagan's approval rating plunged 20 points, but just as seriously, the confidence of his core supporters was shaken. How could The Gipper have been dealing with the ayatollahs in Tehran? Had the 40th president lost his ideological bearings - or his intellectual marbles?After months of drift, in March 1987 Reagan vetoed a big-spending highway bill. The veto was overridden, but Reagan had reconnected with his limited-government base. (As a footnote, the highway bill Reagan vetoed was objectionable to him and his supportersbecause of its 121 pork-barrel "earmarks"; the highway bill that George W. Bush signed in 2005 had 6,371.)
A few months later, Reagan picked another Good Right Fight. He nominated Robert Bork for the Supreme Court. After a clamorous senatorial debate, Bork was voted down.
But along the way, a funny thing happened. Reagan's approval rating crept back up. He proved that by presiding over eight years of peace and prosperity - as he tried to steer the judiciary in a more conservative direction - he could claim steady majority support, defined as a solid base plus a good chunk of moderate "swing" voters. While Reagan lost many battles, including the highway bill and Bork's nomination, he won the war.
Sure, if you make a fetish of your poll numbers you can drive them up, but at the expense of achieving anything meaningful. With the exception of the immediate wake of 9-11, George W. Bush has had low approval ratings because he's chosen to reform the government rather than merely vogue. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 1, 2005 9:27 AM
Bill Clinton had a choice between poll numbers and carrying out public policy that the missus really wanted. He tried to hedge his bets in 1993 by supporting NAFTA and the tax increases, but Hillarycare swamped his party in 1994. From then on, the plan was no major big-ticket initiatives that would lower the poll numbers, with and efforts to move the country to the left being done below the radar, through appointments and presidential decrees.
Bush hasn't been the exact opposite of this, but he knows that there's no sense in hoarding all your poll numbers if it means not getting anything done -- just maintain enough to get re-elected, and make sure the party's ratings don't go in the dumpster during an election year, and you can get lots of things changed (and it does seem that some of the pundits over the past few days have released we're just before the 2005 election, not the 2006 vote, and that what happened in October probably will be just a blip on the radar by the time people vote next November).
Posted by: John at November 1, 2005 12:04 PMJohn, thanks for reminding us about Clinton's executive decrees and other little underhanded ways of getting things done with a little help from the stolen FBI files. Freeh's book didn't even mention them. What a disaster he was.
Posted by: tefta at November 1, 2005 1:47 PM