Country Going Wrong Way, Bush Avoids Blame

The National Broadcasting Company, owned by General Electric (which also owns insurance companies, weapons manufacturers, and at least one medical equipment maker), and the Wall Street Journal (the daily bible of corporate America) just released a poll that says most Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Despite that, a plurality believes the president is doing a good job. Many leftish commentators have suggested that it is just a matter of time before the chickens come home to roost. But an alternate (and much gloomier) interpretation suggests that Americans simply think things can't be helped.

The president, for better or for worse, traditionally gets the credit when things are going well and the blame when things are going badly. Jimmy Carter lost his re-election bid against Ronald Reagan not because Mr. Reagan was seen as the great man his apologist supporters have painted him to be. Instead, Mr. Carter got blamed for stagflation and its related economic misery, a condition that arose from the disastrous economics of guns with butter as practiced by President Johnson. Mr. Clinton, whose presidency was an 8-year-long missed opportunity characterized by small thinking, has a fan club because the USSR went out of business (thanks to the policies of Harry Truman), and the huge drop in communication and data processing prices that Steve Wozniak's Apple II gave the world.

The big picture says 51% of the population thinks the country's headed in the wrong direction, and only 34% disagree. Broken down into its parts, the poll shows a general dissatisfaction. Only 41% of the people think Mr. Bush is handling the economy well, down from 46% in February. The Terry Schiavo circus hurt Mr. Bush, with 35% saying they lost respect for him as a result of the affair. To be fair to Mr. Bush, 46% lost respect for the courts, 50% lost respect for Congress, and 71% said Congress should stay out of cases like Mrs. Schiavo's. On Social Security, 55% think private accounts for Social Security are unwise. Nonetheless, Mr. Bush has more supporters than detractors by a score of 48%-46%.

Skeptics will note that the poll has a margin of error of 3.1% either way -- meaning that detractors might barely outnumber supporters. Still, with so many of the issues going wrong, the numbers against Mr. Bush should be higher. A poll done by the Washington Post and ABC News on Iraq shows little reason to cheer Mr. Bush on that score either. About 53% of Americans say the war against the Saddamites wasn't worth it; 57% disapprove of the way the president has handled Iraq, and 70% say the butcher's bill is too high (1,544 US dead, and 1,721 total coalition KIA).

So, why does America seem unable to connect the dots? The fact is, America currently has come to believe (rightly for once) that the president isn't able to influence all these things. The president alone can't achieve much because his power is circumscribed by the constitution -- and that is a major blessing. As Teddy Roosevelt noted, the president is a "bully pulpit" (a 1904 way of saying "exceedingly good device for moral persuasion"). But when it comes to reversing the course of events, the president resembles King Canute trying to command the tide (Note: That spelling is a British one, and wrong. Moreover, King Knute ordered the tide out not because he was a fool, but because he wanted to remind his court that even his power was limited).

So, things are going badly, and Fearless Leader can't do much to help. What is a democracy to do? There are two ways to view that. The first is the more likely option -- the people will shrug, disengage further from their civic duties and rights and let the spiral downward continue. The second is harder, and few societies are up to it -- the people will shrug and fix things themselves using their democratic power change course. Self-reliance is a virtue that Americans like to claim as their own. Whether it is remains to be seen.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
Produced using Fedora Linux.

Home