George W Bush is not a failure.
Soon, even Republicans will be saying that he was. We must not let them.
Whenever we refer to President Bush as a failure, we ignore the real conservative goals the GOP has accomplished, and they are, in fact, some of the highest goals that party has had for years: They have cut taxes on the wealthiest individuals in this country, have demolished worker safety rules enforcement, have rendered many federal bureaucracies worthless, set up record profits for big oil by means of a secret energy policy, isolated the US from our natural allies, gutted many environmental regulations, and have slowly chipped away at our civil liberties.
They have been successful beyond what many of us thought possible.
And the nation is noticing.
People are not unhappy with Republicans in Congress over corruption, or over lack of inertia. They are unhappy because they have seen "compassionate conservatism" in action, in New Orleans. They have seen the Republican party deliberately try to bankrupt this country as a route to demolish popular programs. They have seen the Republican Party allow corporations and lobbyists write their own legislation. They have seen Republican lawmakers consistently put the needs of their party before the needs of the country. They have seen, in effect, what today's conservatives will do when given power, and it is not pretty.
It is in fact the wild success of this President and his Republican Congress that has made them both unpopular. Imagine how unpopular he would be if he had also succeeded in dismantling Social Security, one of his key goals for this term. By nominating the most right-wing judges available, under the guise of pandering to the religious right, he may yet succeed in this goal, too.
There are still a few years left in the Bush presidency, so it is much too early for conservatives to abandon him without undermining themselves further. But they will, and we have seen them flirting with it already. When they do, it must be clear that he is not unpopular because of his failings, he is unpopular because of his successes. Over the next three years the Republicans will paint George W Bush as a "liberal", or as "not conservative enough", or as simply incompetent, anything to distance him from the conservative movement that he has so accurately and ably represented and promoted.
George W Bush is not a failure. There are many good reasons to say that he is, but winning elections is not one of them. He is not running again. But the Republican Party is.
Conservative political theory has been the failure. And that must be driven home whenever we talk about George W Bush. Dogma is the primary reason the President and Congress are unpopular--because Republican political goals are finally being achieved, and they do not work.
Bush's incompetence and Democratic resistance to Republican goals will ironically be the primary defense of those goals in the next few years, as this will be the only sure way to protect conservative theory from its abject failure in practice. This will also serve to push right-wing voters further right to find a solution to our new problems.
But a successfully executed conservative policy will result in failure every time. George W Bush and this Congress have adeptly proven it--how can we make THAT the lesson learned from today's polls?