March 8, 2006

Yes, I Still Approve of Bush; What’s Your Problem?

Most of last week’s presidential approval polls put President Bush anywhere between 40 and 45 percent. The ones that oversample Democrats and hope no one will notice (cough CBS cough) put him at 34 percent.

Either way, it’s low enough that Bush’s critics feel emboldened to paint those remaining in the supporter camp as “stubborn” or “incurably partisan” or – this is my favorite – “seduced by the Bush personality cult.”

The Bush personality cult? OK, never mind.

Presidential approval polls are curious animals – renewing themselves on a weekly basis, as if any president becomes fundamentally different from one week to the next. As my answer continues to remain the same (yes, I still approve of Bush), the tone of the questioners becomes increasingly aggressive and bewildered. How can you still support him? Look at how this administration is struggling! Look how they’re mishandling things! Look how tone-deaf they are!

I look. I see two things, one that seems to matter and one that really matters. The one that seems to matter is the phenomenon you hear about on the news every night. Things, we are told, are being mishandled. Communication with Congress on a commercial port operations deal. Hurricane response processes. Post-vice-presidential-accidental-shooting media relations execution. These are supposedly signs of an administration that is “off its game,” and the resulting negative storylines drive down poll numbers.

But the things that matter to me haven’t changed at all since November 2004, when Bush was re-elected with the first popular vote majority in 16 years.

Bush was for tax cuts then. He’s for tax cuts now. Bush stood squarely behind his decision to invade Iraq, even as WMDs turned up missing and the death toll rose. He does the same thing now. Bush unapologetically had suspected terrorists sent to Guantanamo Bay, in spite of the fact that his critics howled about “torture” and accused him of squandering international good will. Bush holds the same position today.

Bush was then, and is now, committed to putting strict constructionists on the federal courts. And he’s put two of them on the Supreme Court in his second term, which he didn’t do in his first.

Bush had little use for the United Nations in his first term. He has little use for it today and even sent major UN critic John Bolton to Turtle Bay to do his bull-in-a-china-shop routine.

Tax cuts? Conservatives on the courts? A UN critic having at it while Kofi Annan squirms? Rugged internationalism? These are the things conservatives’ dreams are made of. What’s not to approve of?

On some matters, Bush has been disappointing to conservatives. But these disappointments were already plain to see before 51.7 percent of America went and re-elected him. He has not reined in federal spending as we would have liked, and as he should have given a Republican Congress. He signed the indefensible McCain-Feingold Free Speech Criminalization bill, hoping the Supreme Court would bail him out by striking it down – then found himself stuck with it as part of his legacy when the Supremes forgot that their job is to uphold the Constitution.

He enacted steel tariffs, expanded Medicaid and let Ted Kennedy write his education bill for him.  These decisions did nothing good for the country and bought Bush not one iota of goodwill from liberals (because, if you’ve noticed, the balance in his liberal goodwill account has been at zero for some time now).

Conservatives are disappointed about all of the above, but most believe on balance that he has been excellent on the issues that matter most. That is the view here.

My question would be for the 10 to 15 percent of Americans who voted to re-elect Bush in 2004 and now say they don’t support him anymore. Why? He is the same Bush now. Nothing of substance has changed. History will scarcely recall whether Dubai Ports World got one 45-day review period or two. History will not give so much as a smidgen of ink to Harry Whittington’s encounter with Dick Cheney’s buck shot. And history will neither know nor care whether Bush knew beforehand that Hurricane Katrina might be really bad (besides, didn’t we all?).

Bush is not perfect, but what conservative would trade his strengths for any available alternative? Part of me wishes he would more aggressively tout his policies and his achievements. But I remember a president not long ago who was in perpetual campaign mode. His poll numbers were always high, and he successfully survived impeachment, but I’m not sure I can name a darn thing of any significance that he accomplished. Bush seems to know the difference between always campaigning for yourself and always accomplishing things. And he has chosen the better option.

You want to know how I can still support Bush? I want to know what you think has changed, other than your own mind and the tone of the evening’s news reports. Bush is Bush, refreshingly unmoved by the carping of the chattering classes. If you voted for him in 2004, and you didn’t understand what you were getting, then someone is tone-deaf all right. And it’s not Bush.

This is Column # DC23. Request permission to publish here.