Bush's Legacy Threatened by Ratings, Struggle to Remain Relevant
by Melissa Kaelin
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More people disapprove of President George W. Bush than any other president in U.S. history. A May 2008 survey released by CNN/Opinion Research Corp. indicated that 71 percent of American citizens disapprove of how Bush is running the country.
“This is a hard job,” said Bush during a presidential campaign debate with Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, held on Oct. 1, 2004, in Miami, Fla.
The president's reputation is so scarred that Bush even invited an impersonator to the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner, where he also featured comedian Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report.
For a president who has practically invited the nation to consider him the laughing stock of the country, his approval rating is extremely low, registering in at 28 percent in the CNN poll. The low rating is surpassed only by Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan, whose approval ratings fell to 22 percent and 24 percent respectively. However, even these presidents never experienced a disapproval rating so high. The previous record in disapproval ratings was set by Harry Truman at 67 percent.
Bush was criticized for his lagging response to Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed the city of New Orleans in 2005 and became one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the U.S. He failed to respond to a crisis again in the summer of 2008 when the Midwest was devastated by floods.
Bush served in office during the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and as he faced an angry country, he declared a war on terror. Bush worked to expand the realm of national security, implementing the U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001 – which delegated increased powers of surveillance and detainment to the federal government.
Bush led campaigns against Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and eventually led the U.S. into the War in Iraq on suspicions of weapons of mass destruction, which later proved unfounded. Even with a growing emphasis on national security, the 2008 CNN poll found 68 percent of Americans oppose the War in Iraq.
Bush hounded Congress to pass a $162 billion emergency spending bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at a time when Americans overwhelming asked for U.S. troops to come home. The bill finally passed through both houses on June 30, 2008, but included no timetable for the withdrawal of troops.
The bill came only three weeks after the Senate Armed Services Committee released a report which stated Bush and his V.P. Dick Cheney knowingly lied about the threat Iraq posed to the U.S. in order to lead the country into an invasion in March of 2003. Five years later, the war which began with deceit and a pretentious countdown raged on with American fatalities rising above 4,000.
After the release of the committee's report, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment against the president on the House floor. Kucinich planned to introduce an article of impeachment again, this time only one, that of lies and deceit, on Thursday, July 10, 2008.
Even if Bush's obsession with national security could be justified, the security measures came with a price. Bush picked up his veto pen early in 2008, stealing funds away from domestic measures. He vetoed items such as the Farm Bill, the CHIP bill for children's health insurance, bills for military pay raises, stem cell research, water conservation, food and energy resources, human services and extended unemployment benefits. Time and again the president's veto was overridden by Congress. His only domestic measure, an economic stimulus check, arrived to U.S. taxpayers a little too late, as the economy fell into turmoil.
Now, as Bush moves into the final six months of his last term as president, he is struggling to remain relevant, suddenly advocating for offshore drilling to temporarily stall the energy crisis, and arguing for international action on global climate change. After the G-8 Summit in Japan, Bush said the panel of world leaders had made “significant progress” on fighting global warming, while in reality a strategy to reduce global warming was rejected by other developing nations. The greatest achievement may have been a declaration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by half by the year 2050 – a declaration which gave no base line and was only backed by a few of the emerging powers.
Meanwhile Bush has lost his influence in the eyes of most European countries. Already Europe is looking past Bush, putting in their word for the candidates of the 2008 presidential election.