And Speaking of Failures
Nancy Pelosi has lost it. For her to call President Bush a "total failure" is worse than the pot calling the kettle black - it borders on insanity. She has enjoyed, along with her buddy, Harry Reid, control of Congress since 2006. She has been working with (against?) a lame-duck President who has the lowest approval rating of any President in history. And what has she accomplished?
Nothing. Zip. Nada, other than to drag the approval ratings for Congress down even lower than the President's. And this woman has the gall to say that Bush is a total failure?
If Californians have any brains (an oxymoron, to be sure), this November they will consign her to the dung heap of history, where she belongs.
Not that I'm getting my hopes up, mind you.
posted by VermontGuy @ 6:04 AM
8 Comments:
Nancy Pelosi is a politician not an academic. In her statement, she is reflecting what the majority of Americans appear to believe and surfing the wave of disapproval. Very sane in a political sense. To be sure, she can show few achievements during her tenure but one of the reasons this lame duck has a low approval rating is that he has dug in on increasingly unpopular and been unwilling to work with an opposition-controlled Congress. She and Harry have not been able to overcome this (Don't know if she could have but that doesn't matter- politics is about results not effort) Her only strategy is blame the other guy for being worse.
The reason Bush's approval ratings are low and have remained low is because the signature work of his administration, the war in Iraq, is seen as a failure. Then, the economy started looking bad. (Katrina didn't help either). That one-two combo would knock out anyone. His views have not been "increasingly" unpopular--they were unpopular a couple years ago, and it's too late for people to change their minds now. Selling out his principles and his country by going along with what Nancy Pelosi wants will not help him. I do believe, in fact, that history will bless him for the work he did thwarting the 2006 Congress's plans to get out of Iraq.
I'm sorry, oxymoron? Californians?
I think the continued plummeting of the Bush approval rating justifies the use of "increasingly unpopular" - Every time you thought it couldn't get worse, it did.
Nancy Pelosi or any congressperson will never be popular because Congress as an institution is not really set up to appear heroic. They are either partisan squabblers (since 2006) and when they are not, they are sheep (2002-2006) which is the nature of a deliberative body.
Which principles are being held on to by Bush?- That its wrong to recognize error in the face of overwhelming evidence?
Bush's approval ratings have not been plummeting. They were very low in 2006 before the Dems took the Congress. They have fallen a few points at most since then (hardly plummeting) and that is probably entirely due to the mortgage crisis and high gas prices, stuff he had no control over and would have hurt any President.
The idea that Congress and Pelosi can't be popular is silly. When they were elected, their approval ratings were higher than Bush's, and since then, they've done the plummeting, with ratings somewhere in the low teens. Say what you want about the institution, it's hard to get disapproval that high.
What principles are being held on to by Bush? That, even with the mistakes in Iraq (which he admitted--any politician will admit mistakes if they think it serves them--maybe Barack will someday admit he was wrong about the surge, rather than try to erase what he said from history), we must remain there because it's both the right thing to do and disastrous to leave early. He did this in the face of huge opposition from almost all corners, and in fact, increased troop strength. It was easy enough to fight in Iraq when it was popular, but doing the right thing when it's highly unpopular is the definition of political courage. (A more cynical definition of political courage might be what the people say they want but always hate when it's happening.)
The approval ratings of congress as a whole are always deceptive. The response you get when you ask is, generally, "the group of them suck, but my congresscritter is great."
VG, what exactly is the oxymoron to which you're referring? That parenthetical didn't really parse for me.
"Californians with brains" is the oxymoron. I know, I should have said "Brainy Californians" so put your confusion down to poor phrasing on my part.
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