RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Bush: Stronger Than He Seems

Things are looking up for George W. Bush, and maybe for his party.

The Democrats failed to win the special election in the 50th congressional district of California June 6. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed on June 7. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced he would not seek an indictment of chief Bush adviser Karl Rove on June 12. Bush made a dazzling surprise trip to Baghdad on June 13 and followed up with a confident press conference the next day. The Senate voted 93-6 on June 15 and the House 256-153 on June 17 against U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

A turning point in the president's political fortunes? Maybe. But I'm inclined to think that Bush and the Republicans were not in quite as much trouble as most in the press thought, and I'm not sure these developments will produce an immediate surge in Bush's poll ratings. Why?

Start with the proposition that Bush's low standings in the polls have more to do with competence than ideology. It begins with Katrina: The president was unable to prevent the physical destruction of a large part of a major central city. That's bound to hurt, whoever's fault it was. The struggle in Iraq seemed to be continuing without an end in sight -- and Mainstream Media have done their best to ignore or belittle signs of progress. The Harriet Miers nomination, the Dubai Ports deal, the failure to get Congress to consider Social Security reform -- all contribute to the impression things are out of control. That's not good for an incumbent president. In addition, Bush is at odds with the Republican base on the hot issue of immigration. So his support from Republicans is less solid than it was until 2005.

But impressions of presidential incompetence do not necessarily translate to votes for the other party. We saw that in the California 50th race, where the Democratic nominee got 45 percent of the vote, just 1 percent more than John Kerry won in the district in 2004. To read the Mainstream Media, you would suppose that millions of enraged Democrats are ready to storm the polling places in record numbers and throw the evil Republicans out. But actual election returns don't seem to bear that out. Turnout has been robust in some states (Ohio) and low in others (California), with no clear pattern. We haven't seen much in the way of a disproportionately large turnout increase for Democrats. That may come next November. Or it may not.

Polls, unfortunately, aren't good at projecting turnout.

Also, impressions of presidential incompetence are not necessarily set in stone. They can be altered by visibly good performance or just by the turn of events -- such as, perhaps, the successful targeting of Zarqawi or the standup of the Iraqi government brought to our screens by Bush's trip to Iraq. These show what generally goes unseen in Mainstream Media coverage, the competence of U.S. troops and the growth of a capable Iraqi government and army.

The process takes time, however. The news that U.S. and Iraqi forces are hunting down the terrorists listed in Zarqawi's documents provides a narrative of continuing successes. But that narrative needs to be sustained and extended to produce a turnaround in American public opinion. So the scoffers are probably right when they say not to expect an immediate jump in Bush's job ratings.

But the impression, conveyed over time by visible events, that things are under control and moving ahead could produce such a change.

In the meantime, Republicans are trying to make this a comparative election between Republicans and Democrats, not just an up-or-down vote on Bush. Senate and House Republicans last week staged debates over whether to pull out of Iraq now or stay on. Democrats complained that these were meaningless debates aimed (as they said the debates on the constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriages were) at dividing voters. But on these issues it is the Democrats -- their officeholders and their voters -- who are divided, while the Republicans, with a few exceptions, are all on one side.

The Democrats have profited politically from bad news in Iraq. Good news puts things in a different light and raises the question of just what Democrats would do if in power. For the moment, they are, as ranking House Armed Services Democrat Ike Skelton said, "absolutely" divided. That's not a good posture from which to face the voters.

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r3x29yz4a said:
Well I haven't seen any real proof of this. The army killed someone, big deal. Hardly proves Bush is a good president. And "poll numbers aren't always a good determination" means the person's numbers are in the crapper.

And G-man, you need to have better thread titles. I really expected to see a picture of Bush lifting something heavy.

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Less than a minute on google. Now the thread title makes sense.

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r3x29yz4a said:

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r3x29yz4a said:
Well I haven't seen any real proof of this. The army killed someone, big deal. Hardly proves Bush is a good president. And "poll numbers aren't always a good determination" means the person's numbers are in the crapper.

And G-man, you need to have better thread titles. I really expected to see a picture of Bush lifting something heavy.

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Less than a minute on google. Now the thread title makes sense.

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Notable recent developments:
* Safavian is convicted. On June 20, former White House official David Safavian was found guilty in federal court on four charges of making false statements and obstruction of justice relating to his dealings with disgraced former GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Safavian is the former chief federal procurement officer for the Bush White House.
* North Korea moves closer to missile test. Recent reports have indicated that North Korea is planning to test a long-range ballistic missile for the first time in eight years. This development has provoked extensive diplomatic efforts from the United States and other nations. On June 20, the United States even took the step of activating its missile defense system.
* Violence and instability continue in Iraq. On June 16 -- the same day that Shipman touted Bush's purported comeback -- a suicide bomber killed 11 in an attack on a Baghdad mosque and two American soldiers were captured by insurgents in an ambush near Yusefiya. Four days later, the two soldiers were found dead after apparently having been tortured. The news of the murders came a day after Vice President Dick Cheney stood by his assertion in May 2005 that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes." On June 18, The Washington Post published a cable sent recently from the U.S. Embassy in Iraq to the State Department detailing the "the daily-worsening conditions" in Baghdad and the increasing dangers faced by the embassy's Iraqi employees and their families. The memo, which has received scant attention from the rest of the media despite the very different picture it paints from Bush's optimistic remarks, cited reports that ethnic cleansing "is taking place in almost every Iraqi province." Also, Japan announced on June 20 its intention to pull its 600 ground troops out of Iraq.
* Three soldiers charged with murder of Iraqi civilians. The Army disclosed on June 19 that three U.S. soldiers had been charged with the premeditated murder of three Iraqi detainees, as well as obstruction of justice. Meanwhile, the Naval Criminal Investigation Service is continuing to investigate the possibility that "war crimes" were committed by a company of Marines during an incident on November 19, 2005, in the Iraqi town of Haditha in which one Marine and 24 Iraqi civilians died, including several children.
* Taliban insurgency gains strength in Afghanistan. USA Today reported on June 20 that the Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan is intensifying, as insurgents are "ambushing military patrols, assassinating opponents and even enforcing the law in remote villages where they operate with near impunity." According to Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, "We are faced with a full-blown insurgency." The increased violence and instability has led the U.S. military to mount a substantial counteroffensive involving more than 300 airstrikes in the past three months. Nearly four and a half years ago, Bush announced that the United States had "routed the Taliban in Afghanistan."
* New book details failures of war on terror. Released on June 20, Ron Suskind's new book, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 (Simon & Schuster), includes numerous startling revelations regarding the Bush administration's handling of the war on terror. As Washington Post staff writer Barton Gellman wrote in his June 20 review: "The book's opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.' Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: 'All right. You've covered your ass, now.'" According to Gellman, Suskind also reports that Bush was specifically warned by the CIA in late 2001 that the Pakistani army and local Afghan militias that had cornered Osama bin Laden in the mountains in Afghanistan were "definitely not" equipped to handle the mission and that "we're going to lose our prey if we're not careful." As Gellman writes, "White House accounts have long insisted that Bush had every reason to believe that Pakistan's army and pro-U.S. Afghan militias had bin Laden cornered and that there was no reason to commit large numbers of U.S. troops to get him."
* Rumsfeld does not recall facts of "largest defense procurement scandal in decades." A June 20 Washington Post article highlighted "how little of [Defense Secretary Donald H.] Rumsfeld's attention has been focused on weapons-buying -- a function that consumes nearly a fifth of the $410 billion defense budget." The Pentagon's weapons procurement system became a source of controversy after it came to light in 2004 that the department had spent $30 billion leasing tanker aircraft for which that it had no need, which the Post called the "largest defense procurement scandal in decades." A subsequent investigation by David M. Walker, the comptroller general of the United States, determined that the Defense Department "is simply not positioned to deliver high-quality products in a timely and cost-effective fashion" -- a problem for which he partly blamed Rumsfeld's office.

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* North Korea moves closer to missile test. Recent reports have indicated that North Korea is planning to test a long-range ballistic missile for the first time in eight years. This development has provoked extensive diplomatic efforts from the United States and other nations. On June 20, the United States even took the step of activating its missile defense system.

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* Violence and instability continue in Iraq. On June 16 -- the same day that Shipman touted Bush's purported comeback -- a suicide bomber killed 11 in an attack on a Baghdad mosque and two American soldiers were captured by insurgents in an ambush near Yusefiya. Four days later, the two soldiers were found dead after apparently having been tortured. The news of the murders came a day after Vice President Dick Cheney stood by his assertion in May 2005 that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes." On June 18, The Washington Post published a cable sent recently from the U.S. Embassy in Iraq to the State Department detailing the "the daily-worsening conditions" in Baghdad and the increasing dangers faced by the embassy's Iraqi employees and their families. The memo, which has received scant attention from the rest of the media despite the very different picture it paints from Bush's optimistic remarks, cited reports that ethnic cleansing "is taking place in almost every Iraqi province." Also, Japan announced on June 20 its intention to pull its 600 ground troops out of Iraq.

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* Three soldiers charged with murder of Iraqi civilians. The Army disclosed on June 19 that three U.S. soldiers had been charged with the premeditated murder of three Iraqi detainees, as well as obstruction of justice. Meanwhile, the Naval Criminal Investigation Service is continuing to investigate the possibility that "war crimes" were committed by a company of Marines during an incident on November 19, 2005, in the Iraqi town of Haditha in which one Marine and 24 Iraqi civilians died, including several children.

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* New book details failures of war on terror. Released on June 20, Ron Suskind's new book, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 (Simon & Schuster), includes numerous startling revelations regarding the Bush administration's handling of the war on terror. As Washington Post staff writer Barton Gellman wrote in his June 20 review: "The book's opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.' Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: 'All right. You've covered your ass, now.'" According to Gellman, Suskind also reports that Bush was specifically warned by the CIA in late 2001 that the Pakistani army and local Afghan militias that had cornered Osama bin Laden in the mountains in Afghanistan were "definitely not" equipped to handle the mission and that "we're going to lose our prey if we're not careful." As Gellman writes, "White House accounts have long insisted that Bush had every reason to believe that Pakistan's army and pro-U.S. Afghan militias had bin Laden cornered and that there was no reason to commit large numbers of U.S. troops to get him."

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* Rumsfeld does not recall facts of "largest defense procurement scandal in decades." A June 20 Washington Post article highlighted "how little of [Defense Secretary Donald H.] Rumsfeld's attention has been focused on weapons-buying -- a function that consumes nearly a fifth of the $410 billion defense budget." The Pentagon's weapons procurement system became a source of controversy after it came to light in 2004 that the department had spent $30 billion leasing tanker aircraft for which that it had no need, which the Post called the "largest defense procurement scandal in decades." A subsequent investigation by David M. Walker, the comptroller general of the United States, determined that the Defense Department "is simply not positioned to deliver high-quality products in a timely and cost-effective fashion" -- a problem for which he partly blamed Rumsfeld's office.

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wannabuyamonkey said:I don;t see how this reflects poorly on Bush, but if Media Matters says so, then I guess it's true.

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It was teh previous administrations that gave N. Korea a clean bill of health and allowed him the to procure the materials they needed. Also it's Democrats not Republicans who stood in teh way of Missle Defence. I don;t see how this reflects poorly on Bush, but if Media Matters says so, then I guess it's true.

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Hmm, no mention of Al-Zaquari or the government of Iraq. Surprise that Media Matters can look at teh killing of two servicemen as trumping the death of Al-Zaquari. I wonder if they even know he's dead?

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If you're a terrorsit helfd in Gitmo, you're an innocent civilain, but if you're a soldier then you're guilty untill proven guilty, but please contiue supporting the troops as you've been doing!

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lol, Media Matters considers it "news" that an anti-administration book is being released. I guess we gotta enjoy the victory up untill the day the book is released and it's debunked as so many to precede it.

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Matter-eater Man said:
Actually you'll have to explain the Murtha's brother reference. I honestly don't remember hearing anything about that.

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the G-man said:
...now comes the news that John "Cut and Run" Murtha might be tainted also:

Who is "Kit" Murtha?

He's John Murtha's brother -- a Washington lobbyist whose firm reeled in more than $20 million for its defense contractor clients in the 2004 Defense appropriations bill. And the Pennsylvania congressman is the ranking Democrat on the Defense appropriations subcommittee, which he also chaired for six years before Democrats lost the House in 1994.

The Hill reported in October that John Murtha is the top House recipient of campaign contributions from the defense industry for the past three years. As of the October 31, 2005 Federal Election Commission report, Murtha had received over $200,000 from defense firms in the 2006 election cycle, surpassing the next highest recipient by over $60,000.

Kit Murtha has been lobbying for defense firms since at least 1986, when he became Westinghouse's chief lobbyist in Harrisburg. In 1994, National Journal reported, Westinghouse made Kit Murtha its director of state and local government affairs, in which role he would also lobby the Pennsylvania congressional delegation in Washington. At that time, John Murtha chaired the defense appropriations subcommittee.

And what's more, Murtha's no stranger to congressional corruption scandals. Though eventually cleared by the House ethics committee (which means nothing legally), John Murtha was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Abscam scandal. (Abscam was an FBI sting operation of members of Congress from 1978 to 1980 in which one senator and five representatives were convicted of bribery and conspiracy.) As the Cybercast News Service recently detailed, Murtha was videotaped telling an undercover FBI agent, "I'm not interested. I'm sorry... at this point." When the House ethics committee cleared Murtha in 1981, CNS reported, the committee's lead counsel, E. Barrett Prettyman Jr., quickly resigned. When asked by Roll Call if he had resigned because of the committee's Murtha vote, he said that would be "a logical conclusion." Prettyman has otherwise declined to comment on the Murtha case.

An ethically suspect member of Congress, with close, personal connections to lobbyists whose clients are benefited by his committee? What more could the Washington Post need to begin sniffing around? And now that John Murtha's a nationally prominent politician, he should naturally attract closer scrutiny.

Stories such as these, after much prodding, have forced MEM to grudgingly admit in the past that "some Dems might be implicated too. I'm not ignoring that."

However, after a few weeks, or months, pass, he shows back up, telling us that this is a "republican scandal" and insisting that democrats are either clean as a whistle or police their own "isolated incidents."

Unfortunately for him, some of us have better memories than apparently he does.

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Ah it's the blame it on Clinton excuse/rationalization. Getting a bit long in tooth for that one.

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Actually agree with you on this one to an extent. On the other hand it's certainly not anything positive for Bush is it?

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the G-man said:...
Guess who the very next post after the one about Murtha's brother came from...

That's right...you.

You know, seriously, this is starting to cast you in a really bad light. You've developed a real habit of "forgetting" what you and others have posted in the past and then proceeding as if the earlier discussions never happened.

However, as noted above, "Unfortunately for [you], some of us have better memories than apparently [you]."

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I think my memory is better than somebody from the Bush Administration under oath but it's not the greatest. I also don't see any sinister motive in my forgetting part of your post. If you want to make it look like something shady though it won't bother me. It's a small community here. People know me & they also know you

A Bush rebound--at least a weak one--was probably inevitable. For more than a year, the president was beset by bad luck (Katrina, the Dubai ports deal), failed initiatives (Social Security reform, the Harriet Miers nomination), and persistent trouble in Iraq. His approval rating dropped to an artificially low 31 percent in the Gallup Poll, far below its natural zone between 40 percent and 50 percent.

There's no doubt, however, that a proactive White House bolstered Bush's recovery. In fact, Bush aides have pinpointed the date when they believe the turnaround began: May 15, the day the president delivered a nationally televised address from the Oval Office on immigration.

The speech emphasized beefed up se curity along the border with Mex ico. But Bush didn't back away from his long-held view that illegal immigrants already in the United States should be offered a path to citizenship and that a program for bringing foreign workers here temporarily--"TWP" in White House argot--should be established. Bush's insistence on this "comprehensive" approach didn't please anti-immigration conservatives, but his aides think it eased the worries of soft Republicans and moderates and suburbanites about immigration. Besides, an aide insisted, "standing for something helps you."

So does a crisper White House operation under chief of staff Josh Bolten. "I don't know if we're seeing a Bolten bounce, but we are seeing a Bolten effect," says a Bush aide. "We haven't committed any significant errors. That's important, since we don't have much margin for error."

Especially not on Iraq. The war is unpopular, but it has nonetheless helped the Bush recovery in three ways.

First, the killing of the terrorist Zarqawi and the formation of a permanent Iraqi government were encouraging developments. Second, the president punctuated his support for the new government with a surprise visit to Iraq, and he's gone on the offensive again in speeches defending his policy. On July 4, he told soldiers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, he won't allow the death of 2,527 troops in Iraq "to be in vain by pulling out before the job is done." Third, Democrats have fumbled the Iraq issue.

A major Democratic blunder was the elevation of Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania to the status of chief party spokesman on Iraq. On Meet the Press last month, he cited the humiliating American retreats from Lebanon in 1983 and Somalia in 1993 as models of what the United States should do in Iraq. Another blunder was forcing--and losing--a congressional debate on Iraq. "It helped Republicans and hurt Democrats, something that many pundits didn't believe was possible," a White House aide claims.

For the moment, the issue agenda has turned favorable for Bush and thus for Republicans. His best issue is national security and the war on terror, and the Supreme Court pushed that issue front and center. While striking down the administration's plan for prosecuting terrorists held in Guantánamo, the court said Congress could authorize and set the rules for prosecutions. And that's what Congress will try to do this month, no doubt with extended debate on how to deal with terrorists.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has legitimized White House press bashing by disclosing a secret program for tracking al Qaeda money transfers. When your enemies are liberals on the Supreme Court and in the media, even disgruntled conservatives tend to rally to your side.

At worst, Bush has bottomed out. At best, he's on his way to renewed popularity. "We've stopped our fall and begun to gain back ground," a White House official says. "But we need to make more progress between now and November 1." For one thing, Bush needs to pick up another 5 percentage points or more in approval from likely voters and perhaps as many as 10 points among adults, the group normally sampled by media pollsters. Either way, that would put him in the high 40s, a lofty enough level to assure Republicans he won't be a drag in the election.

Getting there won't be easy. Bush (and Republicans) could use fresh accomplishments. Winning passage of an immigration reform bill, for example, would be a legislative vic tory of the magnitude Bush hasn't achieved since the Medicare prescription drug benefit was passed in December 2003. A successful fight to cut spending would chip away at Bush's image as a profligate spender. A battle to fill a Supreme Court vacancy with a conservative nominee would cause the center-right coalition that prevailed in the 2002 and 2004 elections to coalesce again.

If all goes well--which it often doesn't in politics--even the media might be forced to give Bush a measure of respect. At his press conference in Chicago last week, the press seemed oblivious to his partial recovery. A local reporter asked if a quote by an aide to Republican gubernatorial candidate Judy Baar Topinka had offended the president. The reporter paraphrased the quote this way: "Given your low approval ratings in the polls, they prefer you to come here in the middle of the night." One reason the president had traveled to Illinois was to raise money for Topinka. Bush said he wasn't offended. He should have been.