Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

Welcome to A2K, hamnet. I think the rug has been pulled out from under the Dems on almost every issue, and none of the candidates really wants to take the helm during this time of war, except for Kucinich who would immediately pull us out and forget the whole thing.

I don't think it's over for the Dem party, the Repubs have a way of shooting themselves in the foot whenever they get in a position to really do something. They have abandoned so many principles of the party, like smaller gov't and less spending. The tax cuts are a good idea, but you have to balance them with less spending, I'm confused by the 'no veto' attitude.

This continuous pandering by trying to slip pork under the radar like the Healthcare Reform Bill is going to turn the masses off eventually.

Brand -- Did you see David Brooks' op-ed piece in the Times today opining much the same thing?

Tart, No, but I'm not surprised. I think this new direction will become more of an issue fairly soon. I don't see it ousting Bush next go around but if they don't come up with some good genuinely good ideas and implement them extremely well next term, the Repubs are going to be wondering, once again, why they squandered another opportunity.

Something else I was just yammering about in another thread, Brand, are the splits in both parties now. The far right not liking the Medicare bill at all, nor the deficits, etc. etc. Which also splits the old Dems from the DLC group, though that split has been there for a while, exacerbated by Al From's attempt to squash Dean. Both parties seem to be in trouble, are beginning to fragment. I'm kind of pleased/fascinated by this, though there are dangers too. And I wish others, in different states, would post here about what they are hearing on their local (not syndicated) talk radio. Here in my very Republican part of Texas, there is an increasingly strong showing for Dean ("Confederate flag" guys seem to like his independence) and increasing distancing of centrist Republicans from Bush (I'm talking about local talk shows, uniformly and firmly conservative Republicans). In other words, nothing is safe!

the only thing that seems to bne getting noticed here is the spending (omnibus bill?) that got grossly inflated by last minute pork for the republicans in deal making for the medicare and energy bills. oh and also when Bush was here to visit Colorado Springs Ft Carson, the press were specifically banned from speaking to anyone in uniform.

We have a really good local talk radio station here in the southeast where I live, not very politically oriented but various national and international issues get batted around. I have to say judging from what I hear, this is largely Bush territory.

From the beginning, and particularly after September 11, the Bush Administration has made masterful use of symbols and images to portray George W. Bush as a strong leader, even as a 'hero'. Those not susceptible to the GOP groupthink can only observe with mild disgust while such a pitiful excuse for a leader is worshipped as a Great Man by so many.

That has made me think about a great little book by the British military historian John Keegan -- The Mask of Command. Keegan explores the way leadership roles change with the times by looking at four distinctively different "heroes": Alexander the Great is the prototypical "heroic" leader; The Duke of Wellington is the "anti-hero," a man prepared to fight but without Alexander's theatrics; Ulysses S. Grant is the "un-hero" and the great general of a victorious army because he considered himself no better than his men; and Adolf Hitler is the "false hero," relying on simulated heroism and remaining at a safe distance while his soldiers fought in his name. An excerpt:



The "appeal to manhood" thing looks a bit different in America today than it did in Germany in the 1930s and '40s. Hitler built his Reich from the still smoldering German resentment left over from World War I. The psychosocial foundations of the Bush Regime are not so obvious, but he does appeal strongly to white working-class men who feel entitled to a bigger (or should I say higher?) piece of the pie than they are getting these days. This is true in spite of the fact it is GOP policies, not terrorists or liberals, making sure only rich people get pie.

But back to Bush's quickie visit to Iraq and his false heroism. It appears that if wrapping oneself in the flag isn't working, try wearing a jacket that spells "A-R-M-Y" and get yourself cheered by combat troops.



Bush faces a public relations problem similar to Hitler's -- he is an unheroic man trying to pass himself off as a hero. Author Keegan discusses the fact that while Hitler was allegedly "leading" armies, he was doing so from a number of remote hideaways, far from danger:



Obviously, Bush's plunging approval numbers have persuaded Karl Rove that the Commander-in-Chief needs to be seen as a war leader, accepting the cheers of hardened combat troops while sporting an Army jacket. Not the least reason of which is they won't be able to use any of the video of Bush in a flight suit from the Lincoln.

I could go on for a bit about how Karl Rove's mistake continues to be his banking on Iraq calming down, the unpredictability of war and so on, but I'll save that for another time. Summarizing the divergent views of Bush's little turkey trot:

What a guy! What a hero! -- to some.

Unadulterated horse droppings to the rest of us.

CNN has been all over the Bush Iraq trip, mostly about how the media at large was not let in on it. The argument was weak and at the edge of pathetic, then I just heard the current CNN's Question Of The Week poll:

Should President Bush have told his parents he wasn't going to be there for Thanksgiving dinner?

Geez.

GWBush job rating poll. Doesn't look too good for this 'turkey.' His approval rating is definitely going downhill. http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm

CI -- I think what will be interesting is the polls over the next two months -- they'll contain any variation due to the Iraq trip and Christmas spending. It wouldn't surprise me if they remained relatively flat. Let's keep an eye on his personal ratings which have always been fairly high. They'll likely weigh pretty heavily in a vote...

Tartar, I'm watching the long-term trend downwards. That's the important indicator of what we can hope before next election day. The big problem I see is the infighting of the democrats amongst themselves, and not having any platform that will win the hearts of the voters in 2004. They keep approving legislation that is anti-democratic like the recent drug bill that has gotten it's foothold on privatization of MediCare. It's a confusing time, and I'm not sure who will stand out as a 'moderate' in the next election. All I know is that GWBush must be replaced; he is destroying this country.

Well, as I got talkative about yesterday in a couple of threads, CI, both parties seem to be fragmenting to a greater or lesser degree. I thought I was being so original but find I'm one of maybe thousand, maybe millions, who are returning pleas for support from the DLC and DNC -- not just returning them but writing on them things like "I support my candidate, not you finks!!"

Just curious, but how is privatizing Medicare anti-democratic?

Here, read this. http://www.citizen.org/documents/pporeportfinal.pdf

While the only polls that really matter are the one's to be held nationally next November, its interesting to note that averaging the results of the "Do you approve of the job Bush is doing as President" opinion polls over the past month gives 52.2% "Yes", 42.9% "No". One would expect averaging the results of a dozen similar contemporaneous opinion polls would yield a more accurate picture of public sentiment than might any one poll. Also of interest is that, while having declined from almost unprecedented levels, Bush's approval rating is well within the upper reaches of the long term average of incumbents who have been re-elected since WWII. Neither to be ignored is that over the same period, re-elected incumbents total 4, with three of those having been Republicans, and Republicans alone have managed to string together 3 successive administrations. Historically, The Economy has been the number one issue motivating voters, and The Economy is an issue of which The Opposition has been denied. With manufacturing and employment ticking up, both domestic and global, sustainable growth in the range of "boom" clearly is on the horizon. Despite current friction associated with Iraq, it also is highly probable that situation will trend decreasingly to The Current Administration's disadvantage and that by next Autum, will play a very much smaller role, likely overshadowed by events in Asia and in the Southern half of the Western Hemisphere. Finally, I note with amusement the discomfiture of The Opposition in regard to the recent Pro-Administration TV spot and the PR coup of The President's Thanksgiving Surprise. Given that The Current Administration has not even begun to campaign with any focus or vigor, having as yet no clearly defined individual target at which to aim, the Democrats' future does not appear to be bright enough to call for shades. :cool:

Along these lines, you might find the compilation of raw data on the DrPollkatz homepage interesting. It does just that. And while its author is a strong anti-Bush partisan, his statistical approach strikes me as sound.

Bush Approval
Bush Disapproval
Approval/disapproval spread

Bush Index(average of "approval" ratings over several pollsters, with 95% confidence band)


Enjoy!

as some of us are still waiting for the discovery of WoMD, the outing of the Whitehouse leak, the republican economic deficit plan, the grossly inflated "pork spending", the beneficiaries of the Medicare bill and jobs.

There is nothing in that document that claims that privatizing medicare is anti-democratic.

Thomas, I'm quite familiar with DrPollkatz. As you evidently are one with some grasp of statistical evaluation, I'm sure you notice the clustering trend common to the samples presented, a trend which does not bode inconvenience for Bush the Younger; in particular, Bush Approval clusters toward the low-to-mid 50% range, while Disapproval clusters in the mid 40% range, with the Spread Trend clustering toward zero.

Sure -- I wrote my answer to you not because I disagree with you, but because it gave me a welcome excuse to link to the Pollkatz page, whose approach to resampling poll statistics I like a lot. I don't think I ever said that Bush's decline in popularity will go on for ever -- though I may well have said I wish it would.