The Arabs are stringing us along -- and we are falling for it.
Bush has utterly failed to protect our nation.
A 4/12 e-mail, entitled “Where Bush Job Approval is Heading ,” from Matthew Dowd, Senior Advisor, RNC:
As many will recall, prior to the 2000 National Republican Convention in Philadelphia, by looking at historical Gallup poll patterns, we had predicted that the Bush-Cheney ticket would gain a lead of 10 to 12 points over Gore-Lieberman in the aftermath of the Republican Convention. Then we predicted that after the 2000 Democratic Convention the presidential race would go to even or Bush-Cheney would be slightly behind. Public polling at the time confirmed that all this came to pass as we expected.
Again we want to make a prediction: While President Bush’s approval numbers have been at unprecedented and historical levels for a rather lengthy period of time - they will fall back to more realistic levels. This movement downward has begun (though dropping slower than other Presidents in history), and will continue to fall absent some unforeseen dominating event.
President Bush’s approval rating stayed within five points of his highest rating for nearly 17 weeks - the previous record for a President was seven weeks. President Bush’s rating remained within ten points of his high for approximately 23 weeks.
Looking at history, if President Bush follows a normal historical pattern, his approval rating should return to a "new normal" within 46 weeks from that date or the end of July 2002. Our guess is that President Bush’s numbers will settle out a higher plateau than before because a portion of the American public has fundamentally altered their view of him from how he has handled the crisis.
Therefore, over the coming weeks and months the President’s numbers will continue to drift downward as the November elections near and, as a result, Democratic partisans return to a normal disapproval pattern. Since Democratic partisans account for approximately 40% of the electorate, this by itself could return the President’s approval numbers into the 60s.
So while the pundits and the media attempt to attribute cause and effect to this expected natural fall back - remember that history is the better guide.
The spin before the fall?