GOP Congress in Rebellion Against Bush

All the evidence suggests that the Bush Administration now has an all-out rebellion on its hands from the GOP Congress. This is not isolated in any single issue, such as the ports deal, but in fact extends to that and numerous other issues as well. Republican congressmen are tired of being bullied and ignored by a heavy-handed executive, and they are playing hardball with their President. Given his unpopularity, many of them find it useful to distance themselves from Bush anyway.

In short, Bush has little leverage left within his own party, and his transformation to lame-duck status is all but complete. On all sides, conservative Republicans are working against him. The biggest visible difference between their conduct and that of a Democratic Congress is that they have not begun impeachment proceedings.

This is the clearest example of Bush’s problems with his erstwhile allies. Republican Congressmen feel that Bush is wholly responsible for his current mess over a deal giving a Dubai-based company control of portions of key American ports. Bush, they feel, got himself into this mess when he cut Congressional Republicans out of the equation and kept them in the dark—and now Bush can get himself out of it as far as they’re concerned.

Adding insult to injury, language de-funding the ports deal will be written into the upcoming emergency supplemental. This would be some real intra-party hardball—Bush would have to veto funding for Katrina, homeland security and the troops, or else suffer the undoing of a deal he has promised will go forward.

Another Republican rebellion is breaking out on the budget front, where independent-minded Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is taking on the administration for its budgeting proposal. Bush’s budget zeroes out the so-called “Crime Victims Fund,” which is funded through criminal fines, fees and forfeitures, and thus pays for itself. Coburn is accusing the administration of playing a “budget shell game” by zeroing out the fund in order to make room for more spending elsewhere, but planning to restore the fund later.

Coburn’s hearings, set for today, will include a victim of the Oklahoma City bombing. They are significant because they could be politically damaging for Bush if anyone notices them. More and more conservatives seem emboldened nowadays to snipe at the President, whose poor efforts at reaching out to Congress have not helped his overall cause.

Another rebellion lies here, headed mostly by Louisiana conservatives. Last week, President Bush was brutalized by an erroneous Associated Press story that he had been warned about levee breaches before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans—significant because Bush later said that no one had expected the breaches. In fact, the story resulted from journalists’ taking the plain meaning of words spoken in a videotape and misconstruing them so as to confuse. The AP then waited until Friday night to issue a partial correction.

The episode demonstrates the enduring hostility of the Washington press corps, and the fact they will knife Bush every chance they get. It is the latest in a long line of events that includes the infamous Memogate report, in which forged documents were used to suggest chronic absenteeism and drug abuse by Bush during his military service.

Bearing this in mind, the administration’s inert posture and opacity with respect to the Katrina rebuilding process is all the more baffling. The White House has done little to get its act together and work with members of Congress on the reconstruction, making the President even more of a target for hostile journalists. Moreover, through its curious inflexibility and inaction, the White House has again incurred the wrath of conservative Republicans in Louisiana’s congressional delegation, including Sen. David Vitter (R) and Rep. Richard Baker (R). Even in matters as small as the itinerary of visiting congressmen, FEMA proved inflexible, drawing criticism from conservative Rep. Bobby Jindal (R).

President Bush’s visit to Katrina-ravaged Louisiana this week comes after six months of bungling that threatens political catastrophe for the state’s Republicans. Bush will tout his belated $4.2-billion plan finally to provide housing for people made homeless by the storm, but it may be too little, too late. The government’s post-hurricane performance has been a mess. Republicans, who control the state’s congressional delegation, the U.S. Congress, and the White House, will bear a significant part of the blame.

The simplistic analysis following Katrina predicted that the evacuation of Democratic-voting blacks would turn Louisiana into a deep red Republican state. On the contrary, the performance of the last six months may return the state to Democratic blue. Apart from who was at fault for an inadequate immediate response to the storm, Republicans are blamed for what has happened since then. The government has actually spent only $27 billion on recovery, and none of it has gone to housing. Bush’s new Katrina spending package was drawn up by National Economic Council Director Al Hubbard.

Continued mismanagement has resulted in outrageous spending patterns, beginning with the ridiculous prices—far above the price of actual cruises—the government paid in order to house Katrina refugees aboard cruise ships. Even more outrageous, the reported minimum cost of the trailers intended to be used as temporary housing is $60,000 per unit—enough to build permanent modular housing. And it has proven extremely difficult to get the trailers to needy evacuees, so that many of them still lie idle.

Louisianans are also upset at the “hazard mitigation” program, by which the government would pay homeowners not to rebuild on supposedly flood-vulnerable land—using a generous definition of “flood-vulnerable.” The White House explained to Baker that this provision was inserted to make members of Congress happy. No one seems happy with it at the moment.

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!

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