Wednesday, April 04, 2007

'Regretting Bush'

That's the title of this post. The writer? A political conservative and an evangelical Christian, Will Hinton. Whether you agree with him or not, like everything Hinton writes, it's interesting.

1 comment:

Mark Daniels said...

Charlie:
There's a lot of wisdom to what you say here and second terms are notoriously difficult for presidents. Only Eisenhower and Reagan of recent chief executives have left office with their popularity intact and Reagan was remarkable for having rebounded after his approval ratings had tanked.

Wars, while they're going on, are generally good for presidential popularity. It's usually only after wars have ended that wartime leaders or their parties are punished at the polls.

Lincoln was subjected to vicious attacks during his tenure, of course. But his performance in the 1864 election indicates that he had broad popular support.

I do think that he would have experienced a significant loss of support after the war had he survived however. The same radical Republican forces who bedeviled Andrew Johnson would have gone after Lincoln and his reconstruction program. The difference might have been that Lincoln was a fantastic politician who already had years of experience in dealing with the radicals. Jefferson was dogmatic and unable to even give the appearance of compromise.

Given the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, one might have reasonably expected President Bush to enjoy ongoing support from the American people like that of President Roosevelt following the attack on Pearl Harbor. But that hasn't been the case.

Is the President's low public approval and low approval even within his own party attributable to war weariness? In part, I guess. But many conservatives--including George Will, William Buckley, Joe Scarborough, Tucker Carlson, and others--have opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning. They've described it as Wilsonian. These folks wouldn't be war-weary if they thought that the war was a good idea in the first place.

But they deem the war inconsistent with conservative principles, along with the spending of the past six years. This is where I think conservatives like Will Hinton are coming from.

Thanks, Charlie, for your comments!

Mark