ping
Note to all Port Deal Hysterics. CFR, Education Bill and RX Medicare bill all polled really well too. Stupidity that polls well is still stupid.
Ping
Oh give me a break!
Reagan wasn't a lame duck even when he had his veto overridden with help from members of his own party. Bush certainly isn't one just because one house of Congress passed something he's threatened to veto.
Reagan's 11th Commandment - Do not eat your own party.
Ridiculous satire. Actual title should be:
"Republicans toy among themselves over policy, Democrats beg for attention".
Me thinks you have written his obit a bit early! Misunderestimated one more time!
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
You could've at least had the courtesy to post this over in Chat.
[llevrok: I agree with your basic premise; I wrote the following for the dinoks at FR!]
Given the hysterical rantings from both the left and right concerning the current political viability (and legacy) of President George W Bush, I think it’s time for some historical PERSPECTIVE!
Since many at FR, and around the radio dial, like nothing more than to bash GWB with the record of President Ronald Reagan, I will use the former president as our historical benchmark:
RONALD REAGAN
[NOTE: All ratings are based on Gallup surveys unless otherwise noted.]
Average Job Approval Rating:
RR: 53% (first 5 years: 52%)
GW: 60%
Number of Years With an Average JA Rating in the 40s or Below:
RR: 3 (first 5 years: 2)
GW: 1
Lowest JA Rating:
RR: 35%
GW: 37%
[Keep in mind that GWB is the first war-time president since FDR to run for and win re-election! Truman, LBJ, and Bush 41 all had JA ratings in the 20s at the end of their tenure!]
Highest JA Rating:
RR: 68% (shortly after assassination attempt)
GW: 90% (shortly after 9/11)
During both 1982 and 1983, President Reagan posted an average JA rating of 44% . . . MANY Republicans wanted Reagan ‘to retire’ so that they could nominate a more POLITICALLY VIABLE candidate in 1984. Reagan declined. However, Republicans/conservatives continued to wring their hands about 'polls’ that predicted Reagan would lose the election to, among others, Gary Hart. The hand wringing didn’t abate until Hart self-destructed in the spring of 1984!
President Reagan won his re-election in a landslide and coasted to high JA ratings during 1985 and most of 1986 . . . and then he experienced a political tsunami -- the Election debacle of 1986 (he lost the Senate), the explosion of the Iran-Contra scandal, and the borking of Judge Bork.
The following article describes the fall-out:
Title: “The Reagan Presidency Fades Into Its Twilight”
“It was vintage Reagan: flinty-eyed, sure of his aces. The terse words evoked the “make my day” challenge he had once used to with Democratic talk of tax increases.
But this time it boomeranged. Bork’s nomination quickly plunged toward a resounding and stunning defeat, and much of the commentary that followed had the pall of a post-mortem on Reagan’s political career.
This was not just any lost cause. It had been Reagan’s self-proclaimed “No. 1 domestic priority.” And it had been a cause that most thought Reagan could have won – should have won.
The label of “lame duck,” which some had tried to paste on Reagan just days after his landslide re-election in 1984, seemed at long last to stick. Reaganism, the dominant political force in America for the better part of a decade, now clearly seems to be a spent force.
. . . It’s variable when lame-duckism begins,” notes Nelson W. Polsby, professor of political science at UC Berkeley, “With Reagan, you would have thought it would be later. But it began with Iran-contra.”
FOLLOWING REVELATIONS OF ARMS SALES TO IRAN (and the diversion of resulting profits to aid the contras), REAGAN’S GALLUP POLL RATINGS TOOK A 23-POINT NOSE DIVE. IT WAS SAID TO BE THE MOST PRECIPITOUS DECLINE IN A PRESIDENT’S APPROVAL RATING SINCE GALLUP BEGAN ASKING QUESTIONS.
. . . Iran-contra may have permanently broken Reagan’s unique grip on the American imagination . . . (however) the more structural setback to his power was his party’s net loss of eight seats in the Senate election of 1986 which turned the upper chamber Democratic.
The Senate elections took on a personal dimension because Reagan had stumped for GOP incumbents as few presidents before him. He all but pleaded with his traditional backers to “win one more for the Gipper” and, in so doing, preserve his beachhead on Capitol Hill.
. . . For some, THE MEAN SEASON BEGAN FOR REAGAN EVEN BEFORE THE SENATE DEBACLE. THEY POINT TO THE OCTOBER 1986 SUMMIT MEETING IN REYKJAVIK, ICELAND, WHERE REAGAN APPEARED UTTERLY UNPREPARED FOR THE CHALLENGE PRESENTED BY THE NEW SOVIET LEADER, MIKHAIL S. GORBACHEV. [Note: Conservatives, e.g., William Buckley et al, attacked Reagan relentlessly on this issue!]
. . . (Bottomline) the administration will muddle through 1988 in much the same mode as it has through the past year (1987). The constraining circumstances of Democratic strength in Congress, the diversion of attention to the choice of a new president and the sheer old-news nature of the Reagan presidency will conspire to devalue the White House coin.”
-- CQ Weekly October 17, 1987
INITIAL POST MORTEMS ON THE REAGAN PRESIDENCY:
GALLUP’S PRE-REPUBLICAN CONVENTION POLL
8/10-12/1992
Presidential Approval Ratings for Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter:
Reagan: 47.55% approve 49.21% (-1.66)
Carter.: 49.50% approve 43.06 disapprove (+6.44)
[Yep, one of the worst presidents in American history actually outpolled RR a mere 4 years after the end of RR's HISTORIC presidency and a mere 12 years after RR had defeated him in a landslide!]
SIX MONTHS LATER (February 1993):
Looking back, do you think the economic policies of Ronald Reagan were a success or a failure?
Success 28.72% Failure 61.24% (-32.48)
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! The more things change the more they stay the same!
It took the American public almost 20 years to appreciate the legacy of Ronald Reagan (a man many, including conservatives, savaged during his historic presidency). The same will happen for George W Bush!
[yawn]