Whew! What a week the Bush White House has had!
Since coming back from the Labor Day weekend and the August vacation, the White House has gone into full reversal on a number of issues:
1) Beginning with last Tuesday, Team Bush completely reversed itself and virtually begged the United Nations to help us out in Iraq.
2) At the same time, the same Bush foreign policy team also completely reversed itself on the nuclear problem in North Korea. Now – instead of refusing to negotiate with Pyongyang – the Bush foreign policy team is happy to enter into talks.
3) A day later, the Bush White House threw Judge Miguel Estrada over the side and withdrew his nomination for the US District Court of Appeals.
4) Then the Bush White House – in recognition of the declining number of manufacturing jobs – created a new position in the Commerce Department: an Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Manufacturing.
5) The whirlwind week ended with last night’s Presidential Address to the nation about Iraq and the future of the War on Terrorism.
The backdrop of all these reversals/announcements/appointments was simple: new polling shows the President is now on the verge of repeating his father’s crash and burn in a run for re-election.
The new Zogby poll now shows this President Bush is actually less popular than he was before his inauguration!
In other words, all the high poll ratings after 9/11 and at the end of ‘Major Combat Operations’ in Iraq have been frittered away in an eerie sequel of his father’s similar fall from grace.
Like Bush 41, Bush 43 now has a terrible ‘re-elect number’ – that number of voters who say they will definitely vote to re-elect someone. (The rule in politics is that any incumbent with a re-elect number under 50% is in Big Trouble.) This President Bush’s re-elect number is a paltry 40%.
Conclusion: he is in real trouble for next year – and thus all of last week’s moves.
Lost in all those reversals and stunning policy shifts are a few ‘unmentionables’:
1) Osama bin Laden. Why do the President and his is team never even mention this mastermind of the 9/11 attacks? Why 150,000 wonderful, brave and heroic American troops inside Iraq but not the same level of commitment to capture Osama bin Laden?
2) Why can last week’s NEWSWEEK have a cover story detailing a mountaintop terror conference inside Afghanistan chaired by Osama – yet US intelligence cannot find him?
3) And why does the US Government downplay the importance of killing Bin Laden? The American military spokesman in Afghanistan told NEWSWEEK, “We don’t know where he is. And frankly, it is not about him.” An American diplomat chimed in, “Bin Laden’s operational role is not as important as it was to Al Qaeda and the Taliban.”
4) Domestically, the economy is killing Bush’s popularity – just like it did his father’s. 52% believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. And that was before Friday’s disappointing jobs report was issued.
True, there are still 14 months before the next presidential election. That gives Team Bush time to weather the storm and get re-elected.
But, in the process, are they going to keep reversing everything they said they stood for, increase government spending, and shamelessly ‘play politics’ in an effort to win next November?