This New York Times’ graph offer a telling look at the failure of Bush’s presidency:
Bush has had precisely two serious and sustained bumps. One came after a horrifying attack on the country, the second after he launched a horrifying attack on Iraq. His presidency, then, has been vampiric in nature, thriving when the republic waned and the body counts mounted. He has received precisely no big boosts for domestic policy priorities or achievements. And the trend, after 9/11, is down, down, down. Not just a natural drift out of the stratosphere, but a plummet to the depths. Only three presidents in the 20th century reached Bush’s lows of unpopularity. Carter and Nixon never recovered — but they, at least, had the excuses of rampant corruption, stagflation, and the Iranian hostage crisis. Bush’s unpopularity is entirely the fault of his own mismanagement. According to early reports, tonight’s proposed salve will be a minor change to the marginal deductibility of employee benefits packages. That’ll save him.
But what if 9/11 had never happened? He would have faded into obscurity by Nov 2004 and I would have gotten my wish of two former Presidents named Bush at the family Thanksgiving dinner.
This is not to say we’d have President Kerry either.
Note how precipitously his popularity dropped after the Iraq invasion: a three-month deviation from the slide . . . .
Thanks, Osama. This might prove he really does hate America.