Yes! Bush defeated on Social Security.

[icarus]

Right on!

Bush Admits Defeat On Butchering Social Security

Okay, so I added the word "butchering."

This is the beginning of a long slide for the Bush agenda. Next year is a congressional election year, and after that he's a complete lame duck president. Iraq isn't going away and isn't getting any better, and Iraq plus the Katrina clean-up are the two key issues he mentions in this article: both of them stones around his neck.

The less-government pundits are having to face the facts that "less government" leaves us helpless in the face of disasters like Katrina, and "less government" means we can't afford wars in Iraq either.

Bush is not really a conservative "less government" president, by the way. He makes use of a "big government" with items like, oh, wars in Iraq, Patriot Act red tape, then makes himself popular by cutting taxes (for the people who put him in office) with no clue how to pay for it. That's not less government. It's just less money to run the same amount of government.

Anyone want to help me nail his coffin shut? *Icarus hands out nails*

Comments

[stentoriansista.livejournal.com]

Wow, it only took the American people 5 years, 2 wars, and one major natural disaster to see the gross inadequacies of a man they never should have elected in the first place. The really sick thing is I think that if gas prices hadn't risen, his popularity rating would still be in the 50s at least.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Wrong. He has never been a popular president aside from the boost he got from war.

His popularity was a bare 49% when he started in office, barely winning his first term against an exhausted Democratic party.

(Recall that the independent prosecutor hounded Bill Clinton for 8 years over Whitewater and finally turned up sexual allegations and an impeachment over his affair.) He did not win the popular vote -- against the Al Gore-bot, of all people, someone we'd made fun of for a decade.

Bush's took heat over his many vacations early in office, and remours abounded that he wasn't really the president -- Cheney was running the show. People were also angry that Bush turned out to be more right-wing than he had let on in his campaign. He had portrayed himself as a moderate Republican, but the first thing he went after in office was abortion.

Then 9/11 hit. Bush's lucky break.

Like every other president during wartime, his popularity soared.

But his popularity ratings before Katrina were already sagging, like every other president during a losing war: 48%, propped up by his tax-cuts and strong anti-abortion, pro-Christian stance.

Katrina hit, and his popularity rating went down to 38%. Overnight.

Icarus

[stentoriansista.livejournal.com]

OK, Point.
However, you kind of gloss over the part where we *re-elected* him. There were 3 years between Sept. 11th and the 2004 elections, and his popularity stayed high enough through that period(granted, just barely) to get him re-elected.

And maybe it's the cynic in me, but I still think gas prices had more to do with his popularity dip than compassion for Katrina survivors. Sure people were appalled, but it didn't affect say, your average Iowan. It's easy to turn off the tv and forget, it's harder to look at your wallet emptying everytime you fill up. People care about what's important to them, what touches them directly.

Maybe working in politics in DC has made me jaded before my time, I don't know. I work for social justice just as hard as I ever did, but people are really starting to depress me.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

However, you kind of gloss over the part where we *re-elected* him. There were 3 years between Sept. 11th and the 2004 elections, and his popularity stayed high enough through that period(granted, just barely) to get him re-elected.

Yes. That's part of why he kept us in Iraq. War-time presidents are almost always popular, able to beat the drum of patriotism. So long as he could keep it under wraps that we were losing the war....

The way to keep your hopes from flagging is to broaden your view to encompass vast scopes of time.

I lived in DC for ten years largely, working on the Tibet issue when it came to politics, and it does get depressing.

Icarus

[stentoriansista.livejournal.com]

::smiles::
Thanks for the encouragement. I think a lot of us here just feel like we're banging our heads against a wall, and after a while you just start to wonder "why am I doing this?" It's been my experience that something does eventually come around to remind me why I do this, and in the interim, I can whinge in strangers' journals. :)