That was what nailed the coffin closed ... (4.00 / 3)

GWB got a serious reprieve because of 9/11 ... if you remember .. his approval numbers started to sag before 9/11 .. and that in a way .. saved his bacon .. and gave him plenty of time to recover .. which he proceeded to squander .. hell .. if it wasn't for 9/11 .. he would have been a one and done like his dad

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by: Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle @ Sat Jan 10, 2009 at 06:44:59 AM UTC

yup gotta agree (4.00 / 1)

check out the chart of both terms.  For better and for worse, aside from triggering events that rallied people behind the flag or the election in 2004, it was almost all downhill.

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by: dr anonymous @ Sat Jan 10, 2009 at 07:57:45 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I Was Thinking Of Doing The Same Thing For A Diary (4.00 / 1)

Because I remember so clearly how his ratings were headed downwards well before Katrina, and I always love a chance to pull out the old Bush collapsing approval story in dramatic picture form.

Just don't forget Cindy Sheehan making her appearance in between Terri Schiavo and Hurrican Katrina.  This was truly the period in which Bush showed that he was utterly incapable of dealing with anything.

(For those who had been in deep hypnosis for the previous 4 1/2 years, and somehow missed that whole boxcutters taking down America thingie on 9/11/01.)

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Jan 10, 2009 at 07:35:16 AM UTC

Actually, I think that Bush showed great generosity of spirit (4.00 / 3)

and personal humility in allowing himself to be politically destroyed by his own incompetence and overall assholeishness. That alone qualifies him as the finest full-term 21st century president we've ever had. A lesser man would have done much less to destroy himself.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Sat Jan 10, 2009 at 07:44:24 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Always going down (4.00 / 5)

In slight contrast to what I said below, Bush's ratings have always gone down at a near linear rate, with a few dramatic exceptions.  Here's the first chart I found googling around:

Rallying around the president after 9/11 and the Iraq war were the main counters to the downward trend, plus partisan rallying around election day .  But in general, the more people go to know Bush, the more they didn't like him.

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by: Mark Matson @ Sat Jan 10, 2009 at 07:46:09 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Thanks for producing the graph (0.00 / 0)

and for your comment, which pretty well is line with what I posted below.

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by: frankly0 @ Sat Jan 10, 2009 at 07:51:47 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Synergy (0.00 / 0)

I think the one-two punch of Schiavo and Katrina really opened the eyes of Americans.  Though Americans sided strongly against Bush on the Schiavo affair, I think the incident would have been forgotten (and thus forgiven) a few more months down the road.  Katrina would have been bad in any situation, but by itself people might have bought more into the "what can government do" line of thinking.

But man, to have Katrina so soon after Schiavo.  The contrast was overwhelming.  Clearly, Bush and congress could act strongly and decisively when they needed to, but New Orleans wasn't as important as one brain-dead woman.  Disgusting.

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by: Mark Matson @ Sat Jan 10, 2009 at 07:39:52 AM UTC

Five things happened during the first half of 2005 (4.00 / 4)

that doomed Bush, and really the GOP.

One was obviously Schiavo, which revealed them to be craven cynics of the worst kind.

Two, Tom DeLay's downfall, which really took the wind out of the GOP's sails, politically, and finally made the public take notice of its corruption.

Three, the various other GOP scandals, especially Cunningham, Abramoff and Ney, which just reinforced how corrupt they were.

Four, the failed attempt to personalize privatize Social Security, which angered everyone to the left of Grover Norquist.

And five, Katrina, which really brought home just how awful a president, and really human being, Bush was. This really destroyed him, politically.

Then later that year, and in early '06, were DUbai ports, the Miers nomination, and of course the ongoing horror that was Iraq.

And to think that all the bloviators went gaga over his rediculous second inaguaral address where he flat out lied about how Iraq was all about spreading democracy and how he wants to bring it to the rest of the world (to which the rest of the world said "NO! Please, thanks but no thanks! Just send us a check or a gift certificate or something.").

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Sat Jan 10, 2009 at 07:39:54 AM UTC

And as Paul pointed out above (0.00 / 0)

There was also Cindy Sheehan during the summer of '05, which put Iraq front and center--as well as Bush's heartlessness and, really, sociopathology.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Sat Jan 10, 2009 at 07:52:41 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Plus, He Was Just Plain Scared To Face Her (4.00 / 1)

It showed him up as the moral coward us DFHs knew him to be.  Even some of the M$M started to see that.

It really set him up for the avalanche of richly-deserved criticism that came with Katrina.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Jan 10, 2009 at 08:46:27 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Honestly I see no merit (4.00 / 1)

to Digby's argument that the Terry Shiavo incident was the "turning point" in Bush's popularity.

It would have been very helpful had you included Bush's poll numbers from the beginning of his Presidency. The overall shape of that curve could not be more obvious: they were quite middling until 9/11, at which point they shot up near 90%.

From then on, it was a nearly linear degradation in the curve, with a few deviations related to the Iraq War and some events following it (the capture of Saddam, for example).

Basically, Bush got a huge artificial boost from 9/11, and then over time that bounce simply deteriorated as Bush's problems with governance, as demonstrated by the failure in the Iraq War and everything else, including Shiavo, Katrina, the mediocre economy, etc. etc. simply accumulated in an increasingly negative impression. To act as though there were a specific event that "turned the perception" of Bush just doesn't jibe with what the shape of the curve would suggest.

Sometimes I have little patience with arguments like Digby's, which try to impose a narrative on things that took place that simply doesn't hold up against actual measurable events.  

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by: frankly0 @ Sat Jan 10, 2009 at 07:50:10 AM UTC

if you actually read digby's post... (4.00 / 1)

You would have noticed that not only did she mentions all that she doesn't try to impose a narrative on things.

"That's ridiculous, of course. The fact is that his support, even after 9/11, was never more than an inch deep, despite the media's insistence that he was the second coming of Alexander the Great. There was that little matter of a catastrophic terrorist attack, the looting of Iraq, the missing weapons of mass destruction, Enron and the fact that his allegedly triumphant reelection was another squeaker that relied once more on Republican shenanigans. Those things were in the mix long before Katrina.It was the press, more than anything, that propped him up, calling him an "enormously popular president" long after his numbers had fallen back to earth.

But in my opinion, there was a specific turning point, and it wasn't the hurricane."

And of course the specific turning point she mentioned was indeed the incident that caused his disapproval rating go past his approval rating permanently.

And yes, going from a net positive to a net negative approval rating permanently is actually a turning point. Go figure.

You seem to detach the approval rating from actual happenings and treat it like a mathematical function. Digby mentions all those incidents you mention, but at least she understands that the shape of the graph didn't have to be a nearly liniear line. Each of the incidents and circumstances given have no automatic positive or negative influence on popularity ratings. If Bush would have actually started handling the various incidents and circumstances competently the decline would've stopped. If he had handled this incident competently, he wouldn't have dropped below 50 then, If he also had handled Katrina competently his figures might have actually improved, etc. His continues linear decline is coupled to his continues mismanagement and was not automatic.

Digby is right that the Schiavo case proved a turning point where his incompetence caused his approval ratings to go negative, and makes a good case that it made subsequent possible improvements a lot harder.

And after rereading this I seem to have tremendous patience with people unable to understand actual measurable events and use smug disdain to cover for their lack of reading and reasoning capabilities.

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by: Ernst @ Sun Jan 11, 2009 at 02:25:53 AM UTC

[ Parent ]