Mark West

Were the president at all concerned with doing the will of the public, he would change the course of his administration in light of recent polling numbers.

The percentage of people who, in the early weeks of June, 2007, said they approved of the way George W. Bush is handling the presidency was 26 percent. This number was not the lowest ever recorded; that dubious honor goes to Harry S. Truman in a poll conducted in February of 1952, who rang up a 22 percent. He, too, had a disastrous war ó that time, in Korea. But he also had rampant inflation and price controls, and had been trounced by Estes Kefauver in the New Hampshire primary. Richard Nixon, in a January 1974 poll, received almost equally wretched approval numbers.

He, too, had a high inflation rate ó this time, of almost 11 percent ó as well as disapproval over strategic arms limitation talks.

As the above data suggest, the amazing thing about Bushís unpopularity is that it is happening in the midst of tolerable economic times. John Muellerís landmark analyses of presidential unpopularity found that there were four things that contributed to presidential unpopularity ó an unpopular war, an economic slump, the collapse of coalitions that had supported the president, and the failure of attempts to rally the public around the flag. In the prior cases analyzed by Mueller, popularity numbers in the twenties required an economic downturn as well as an unpopular war. Bush, in his own way an innovator, has done what neither Nixon or Truman could do. He managed to alienate four out of five Americans without a recession.

Here, then, we have an early indicator of just how unpopular the war in Iraq has become. It is as unpopular as Korea or Vietnam ever became. And a poll by the Washington Post, released June 5, suggested the same thing: 61 percent of respondents to that survey said the war in Iraq was not worth fighting, and nearly two-thirds said the United States is not making significant progress restoring civil order in Iraq, the Post said.

And, perhaps most alarmingly, 73 percent of Americans responding to the Washington Post survey said the country is ìpretty seriouslyî on the wrong track.

How would a rational individual ó a public servant ó respond to such data? Surely a reasonable person would reconsider the path he was on, and would reflect that a public servant must needs consider the clearly expressed wishes of his constituency; surely he would then try to seek a way out of the quagmire that Iraq had become.

But not George W. Bush, a man for whom reason is as alien as a Romulan bird of prey. Instead of trying to follow the path of both reason and the will of the American public, Bush is seeking support for one more grand invasion, one more chance to prance about the deck of an aircraft carrier in a borrowed flight suit under a banner proclaiming ìMission Accomplished.î

This manís grandiosity would be laughable were it not for the fact that yet more American lives may well be sacrificed to fuel his dreams of yet salvaging some sort of legacy. And ignoring the discontent of the public isnít being steadfast to a principle; it is abandoning the responsibility of a president in favor of the no-doubt more heady role of king.
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Mark West is a professor of mass communications at UNC Asheville.