Just some snippets of various articles, some from liberals and some from conservatives, that ought to warm the heart-cockles of any good Bush hater...
(Emphases mine.)
The Beatable Bush
By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
As I fielded questions from readers in my online chat yesterday afternoon, one theme dominated: Is President Bush vulnerable in November?
New poll data suggests that, viewed in a historical perspective, the GOP should be very concerned about what November holds.
A national poll conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center from Feb. 11-16, shows Bush's favorability rating down sharply (to 53 percent), while "45% of Americans have a positive view of the Democratic candidates, up from 31% in January."
Democrats are also making inroads with independent voters, with 44 percent of them expressing a positive view of party, up from 27 percent last month.
Meanwhile, the number of people who think Bush will win continues to slip and now stands at just more than 50 percent. My feeling is that polls this far out from the election mean virtually nothing. The polls have been up and down and all over the place for months and will continue to be through November. But one new poll offers some perspective...
A new Gallup Poll has Kerry leading Bush 53 to 46 percent, and says a "review of historical trial-heat data from past elections shows it is rare for an incumbent president to be trailing at this stage in a campaign." In most cases, the incumbent leads in February against any of his potential opponents.
[...]
Bush fares worse against a general election opponent than any presidential incumbent going back to Harry Truman in 1948.
We don't need data, of course, to know that the White House has had a very tough couple months, from the president's poorly received State of the Union speech, to flip-flopping on job creation predictions, to explaining the exploding federal deficit, to enduring stories questioning the administration's credibility on weapons of mass destruction and estimates on the cost of the Medicare bill.
At the same time, the Democratic presidential candidates, once thought of -- even by some within the party -- as an uninspiring and bedraggled bunch of dolts, suddenly were inspiring their downtrodden troops. Even flameouts Howard Dean, Rep. Richard Gephardt and Sen. Joe Lieberman helped elevate the debate and the hopes of those wishing to oust Bush in November.
Boston Globe:
All over Washington, journalists were suffering from Russert-envy. Given Bush's dim performance, it's unlikely that his handlers will repeat an open-ended interview any time soon. But the rest of the press should take heart. You don't need a live interview with the president to expose his misrepresentations. All you have to do is check the public record, compare what he said with what he did, and not flinch from reporting what you find.
The press often behaves as if "fairness" dictated not drawing conclusions in a news story. But if the president insists that black is white, pointing out the lie is not opinion journalism; it's reporting fact.
[...]
Just when the press was getting skeptical, Bush benefited immensely from 9/11. There was a natural coming together behind the chief executive, and criticism of the president seemed almost unpatriotic. Bush's political operatives exploited this sentiment ruthlessly. Also, the White House staff works systematically to isolate reporters who do ask impertinent questions by denying them access.
Finally, Bush has had the advantage of a closely allied right-wing press, ranging from Fox News to The Wall Street Journal's editorialists, the Washington Times, The Weekly Standard, and the talk radio ditto-heads. There is no comparable propaganda machine among his critics.
[...]
Once a president loses a docile press, he seldom gets it back. It's good to see the media doing their job again.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.
Will Dubya Dump Dick?
Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service
[Dick Cheney] is increasingly seen by Republican Party politicos as a millstone on the president's re-election chances in what is expected to be an extremely close race.
[...]
Cheney's association with Halliburton, the giant construction and oil company he headed for much of the 1990s and that gobbled up billions of dollars in contracts for Iraq's postwar reconstruction, is also becoming a major political liability. Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail are already using Halliburton's rhythmic, four-syllable name (HAL-li-bur-ton, HAL-li-bur-ton) as a mantra that neatly taps into the public's growing concerns overn Iraq and disgust with crony capitalism and corporate greed, all at the same time.
[...]
Reports of a discreet "dump Cheney" movement, launched by intimate associates of Bush's father (former president George H. W. Bush), were already surfacing two months ago. Cheney's detractors include national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former secretary of state James Baker, who now has a White House appointment as Bush Jr's personal envoy to persuade official creditors to reduce substantially Iraq's $110 billion foreign debt. Both men battled frequently with the vice president when he was defense secretary in the first Bush administration.
[...]
The underground campaign explains many of Cheney's recent actions, including holding unprecedented rounds of press interviews in January, as well as his trip this week to Switzerland and Italy (marking only the second time the vice president has traveled abroad in three years). "I think he knows that he's in trouble," said a prominent anti-Cheney Republican activist this week. "I don't think there's any other way to explain why he would sit for a puerile interview for the [Washington Post's] Style section. You know he despises that sort of thing." Cheney's travel and sudden and abundant press availability was noted in Tuesday's New York Times, which described his behavior as "a calculated election-year makeover to temper his hardline image at home and abroad".
But Cheney's appearances may, in fact, have merely confirmed his image as a zealot. In an interview he gave National Public Radio (NPR) last week, Cheney not only insisted that major stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) may still be found in Iraq, he also claimed that two semi-trailer trucks found in that country during last year's U.S.-led war constituted "conclusive evidence" of WMD programs. Both assertions were almost instantly refuted by none other than the administration's outgoing chief weapons inspector, David Kay.
[...]
In the same NPR interview Cheney also insisted there was "overwhelming evidence" of an "established relationship" between former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist group...But the notion of such an "established relationship" in any operational sense has now been almost uniformly dismissed by the intelligence community, and even Bush and other senior White House officials have dropped the issue.
In another interview, Cheney told USA Today he was not worried about his image as the administration's Machiavelli, skilled in the quiet arts of persuading his "Prince" to pursue questionable policies, adding, remarkably, "Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole? It's a nice way to operate, actually."
[...]
[W]ith recent polls showing Cheney's favorability rating at less than one-half of that of Bush -- a mere 20 percent and falling -- so might the vice president's claim to the No 2 spot on the Republican ticket.
That's awesome that his favourability has dropped so low. I remember for a long time in the early months and even years of Bush's presidency, Cheney's popularity was consistently (and mysteriously, to me and every liberal I knew) higher than Bush's. I guess people just didn't really know what his deal was, so they were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. It would be interesting to see a graph showing both Bush and Cheney's popularity, to see when they intersected.
Here's some nice Republican fear ("pucker factor"), courtesy of our old buddy Bob Novak:
WASHINGTON -- The Republican high command ought to be ecstatic over John Kerry's ascent toward the Democratic presidential nomination. His political profile should reassure George W. Bush's supporters: Massachusetts upper class, Vietnam antiwar protester, Mike Dukakis's lieutenant governor, Teddy Kennedy's protege, 95 percent liberal voter. Yet, ever since Kerry won in New Hampshire, Republican concern about President Bush's re-election has grown.
"I can see the pucker factor," said one GOP operative, using the old military slang term for an attack of gut-clenching fear. What he implies is that he and his colleagues are confronting the possibility of another Bush becoming a one-term president. Predictably, Republicans reacted to Sen. Kerry's success by pasting the liberal label on him. Why, then, the pucker factor?
First, because Kerry is an elusive target. Dukakis's old running mate showed in the hours after he was declared the New Hampshire winner that he is no Dukakis. Second, because Bush may be facing the bane of incumbent presidents: lack of credibility. That malady caused Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson not to seek another term and helped defeat Jimmy Carter and the senior George Bush for re-election.
[...]
[This was] the most ineffective State of the Union address in recent years by a president whose previous efforts were able to utilize that event.
[...]
Since nobody wants to say the emperor wears no clothes, worried Republican operatives talk not about raising up Bush but bringing down Kerry. Republican National Chairman Ed Gillespie, given the assignment of rolling out Kerry's liberal record, has come under private criticism by his GOP colleagues. They knock Gillespie, not for trying, but for failing to clearly expose Kerry as a compulsive liberal.
It's not easy. A few minutes after the television networks declared Kerry the New Hampshire winner, the senator said: "I've been a hunter all my life, and I'm a gun owner, and I've never thought of going hunting with an AK-47. I believe in the Second Amendment." When I told a Bush activist about these pro-gun comments, he wondered whether Kerry ever would say that publicly. In fact, he did make that statement publicly over CNN.
[...]
Most worrisome to Republicans is Kerry's war hero image while, in the words of one prominent Bush supporter, "our guy was drinking beer in Alabama" (where actually he was working on a losing Senate Republican campaign in 1972). Republicans are trying to negate Kerry's heroism with his postwar peace activism, but that approach is not working.
[...]
This may be a case where the liberal is a sufficiently agile dodger to blur his past, and the Republicans must rely on George W. Bush
[...]
White House spokesman Scott McClellan bridled at the thought of the president suffering a deficiency in credibility. But that in truth is the biggest problem he faces today.
And finally, just for fun, a couple of especially revealing Bush quotes:
You know I could run for governor but I'm basically a media creation. I've never done anything. I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business. But that's not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office. -George W. Bush, 1989
I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves. -George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 21, 2003
Get rid of this LOSAH!!
