The Blessing and the Curse of Bush’s Low Approval Ratings
You have to give it to him. In the end, President Bush has proven true to his word. He is a uniter, and not a divider. He’s united almost all of us against him.
A lot today is being made of the president’s low approval rating. The subheadline on page three of Wednesday’s Washington Post was “In Modern Era, Only Nixon Scored Worse, and Only Truman Was Down for So Long.”
And the statistics, by any measure, are staggering. Nearly two out of three Americans disapprove of the President’s job in office. Even at the nadir of his administration, with the nation in turmoil over Vietnam, LBJ’s disapproval barely crested above 50 percent.
The reason for the president’s dramatic fall from grace isn’t hard to identify. In a word, it’s Iraq. Despite deep divisions over the wisdom of going to war in 2003, four years later, almost everyone blames the president for his handling of the war. And despite some disagreement about how to get out of the current quagmire, the vast majority of Americans support some sort of new direction.
Many progressives share a sense that the chickens have come home to roost. While pained by the carnage and chaos overseas, there’s a palpable sense of satisfaction that, had the rest of the country just seen what we saw in November of 2000 or November of 2004, they would have voted as we did. And as reports out of the White House continue to focus on the president’s political impotence, it’s hard not to hear faint echoes of the taunting chorus “na nah, na nah, na nah” wafting through the humid summer air in Washington.
If ever there was a time when Democrats felt assured that voters couldn’t possibly disagree with them next time around, this is it. To many observers, it seems as if even the most the most incapable Democratic candidate would beat a Republican vying to succeed the president. For crying out loud, if we nominated Mike Gravel, plopped him in an army tank, crowned him with an oversized military helmet, handed him a banner promising to double everyone’s taxes, and paraded him in front of the national press corps, wouldn’t he still beat a Republican tarnished by Bush’s folly?
And that is — by any measure — the blessing of the president’s low approval rating. It seems as if even a party as prone to self-destruction as the Democrats can’t screw this one up.
But hidden beneath the sort of giddiness that comes with such a dramatic reversal of fortune are a series of perils — any one of which could undermine Democrats in the coming election cycle. And even if President Bush’s low approval rating makes the Democratic nominee invincible next fall, failure to pay attention to those electoral hazards could doom a Democratic president, and in so doing squander the opportunity that seems, today, easily within our grasp.
First, we ought to be wary of what some might call “issue creep.” The “switchers” - those who voted for Bush last time and will almost certainly vote for the Democrat in November of next year - will switch because of Iraq. There’s no reason to believe that they’ve changed their view of “family values.” Or that going back to the welfare we once knew (i.e. the welfare we had before we changed welfare as we knew it then) is high on their priority list. It’ll be tempting for some progressives to ascribe to the vast group of Americans who detest President Bush a wholesale endorsement of the liberal agenda. But demanding an alternative to George W. Bush is not the same as pining for Walter Mondale. President Bush’s low approval ratings may cause some to miss the distinction.
Second, we ought to be sensitive to the complexities and differences among the vast group of Americans who are inclined today to vote for a Democratic candidate. It’s easy — as legions of Americans wake up to realize just how dismal the Bush presidency has been — to assume that everyone has awakened with the degree of vitriol exhibited by the protesters beating drums outside the last WTO meeting. The fact is that disagreements are rife among those of us who disapprove of the president. For example, some of us support gay marriage, and some don’t. The Republican nominee, whomever he is, will be prepared to exploit those faults next year. So while they’ll want to deliver us a death by a thousand blows, we’ll need to be disciplined, and make sure our coalition isn’t blown apart at the seams. President Bush’s low approval rating may delude us into believing we’re homogenous.
Third, we need to be ready to govern. The lessons of President Clinton’s first two years in office — unmanaged, wayward, and ultimately unsuccessful — should serve as notice that even if the Democratic candidate wins in November, a disciplined campaign doesn’t necessarily translate into a productive White House. A Democratic president won’t be able to enter the oval office and simply do the opposite of what George W. Bush would have done [Though it’s tempting, isn’t it? I mean, this guy is so far gone he’s come out against health care for children!]. Eighteen months out, it seems far-fetched to think about how a Democratic president would govern. But if we don’t want to see the political capital we’ve accumulated evaporate after two frustrating years of a Democratic administration, we need to begin planning now.
There’s no doubt that Democrats are in the driver’s seat eighteen months out from the November 2008 elections. The disaster of the Bush presidency makes the White House ripe for the picking. But with opportunity comes (wait for it … wait for it …) responsibility. And if we indulge ourselves, over-reach, or delude ourselves into believing that the political coalition we need to maintain is a monolith of committed progressives, we may squander the opportunity of a generation. Let’s not let that happen.