Maybe President Bush should volunteer for impeachment.
After all, the last President to be impeached, William Jefferson Clinton, actually enjoyed a popularity surge after proceeding had concluded in 1998. During Republicans’ tireless efforts to smear the nations top Democrat and remove him from office Clinton had an approval rating of 58%. After the whole sorry business was concluded Clinton had the approval of fully two-thirds of the American people.
Right now, George W. Bush could use a similar surge in his numbers. Come to think of it, the current occupant of the White House could use a surge anywhere except in Iraq, where he wants one. The latest CBS poll, taken over this past weekend, shows Bush with an approval rating of 28%. One has to go to end of Richard M. Nixon’s scandal-ridden Presidency to find approval numbers lower than Bush’s. Nixon’s numbers right before he offered that defiant pose as he boarded Marine one were 24% - a mere four percentage points lower than Bush’s. This was a man who had become embroiled in the most far-reaching political scandal in the nation’s history. Almost everyday, the public was learning new facts about the depths to which the administration would sink in order to remain in power.
Nixon’s Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, had already resigned due to mounting pressures and scandal of his own. And still, Nixon, whose name has become synonymous with all that is wrong in politics, was just four percentage points lower than President Bush.
From all indications, then President Bush’s efforts to stir up enthusiasm for the botched occupation of Iraq during his State of the Union message tomorrow night will mostly go unheeded. Only the hard-core Kool-Aid swilling true believers are prepared to take this President’s word on anything. The Nixon White House was in the same boat in 1974.
So maybe an impeachment would do President Bush some good. Maybe he could find a little blue dress of his own to stir up support. Just as long as the dress doesn’t belong to Dick Cheney.