Father and Son
Reunion
By MAUREEN DOWD,
OP-ED Columnist, NYTimes on the Web, May 10, 2006
WASHINGTON -- One Bush did it
by staying out of Baghdad, raising taxes and driving down the deficit.
The other Bush did it by going into Baghdad, cutting taxes and driving up the
deficit.
But, perhaps inevitably, the father and son ended up in an Oedipal tango at the
same spot: 31 percent.
After trying not to emulate his father's presidency in any way, W. emulated it
in the worst possible way. He came out of a conflict with Saddam as a
towering figure with soaring approval ratings and ended up as a shrunken figure
with scalding approval ratings.
In the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, W.'s stunning implosion landed him
in a tie with his dad's low point in July 1992, four months before the public
traded in Poppy for Bill Clinton. As Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee noted
in their Times article today, that is the lowest approval rating for any
president in the last half-century, other than Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter.
Even Hillary Clinton has a more favorable rating than W. — 34 percent. The
president can draw some solace: John Kerry's at 26 and Al Gore's at 28
percent. And Dick Cheney is in the bunker at 20.
But in the new poll, even many of the party faithful are glum. Only 45
percent of evangelical Christians, 69 percent of Republicans and 51 percent of
conservatives like the way W. is taking care of bidness. A whopping 70
percent deem the country pretty seriously on the wrong track, and two-thirds
consider the nation in worse shape now than when W. took over.
On the issues that earned Karl Rove his nickname, Boy Genius — values and
national security — the shift was notable. Fifty percent of respondents
said Democrats came closer to sharing their moral values, compared with 37
percent who said Republicans did. And the G.O.P. retains a tenuous
advantage on being seen as stronger on terrorism. The numbers for those
who think we did the right thing by invading Iraq are steadily dropping, and the
numbers are rising for those who believe we should have stayed out.
Many Americans have simply lost faith in the administration's ingenuity.
Only a quarter of those polled had much confidence in W.'s ability to handle a
crisis; a mere 9 percent are sure he can successfully end the Iraq war, and a
paltry 4 percent think the administration has a clear plan to keep gas prices
down. (But can triumphalist Nancy Pelosi lift their spirits?)
The Bush presidency has devolved into an assertion of empty will.
The White House blew off warnings from Republicans in Congress about appointing
Gen. Michael Hayden as C.I.A. chief. You know you're in trouble when
conservatives fret that the military is getting too much power.
If W. really cared about getting good intelligence for his war on terror, he
would never have appointed Porter Goss. That wasted more than 18 months
that could have been used fixing the dysfunctional agency, and drove out some
good officials.
Mr. Goss, the Cheney toadie, was appointed because W. and Vice wanted him to do
a hostile takeover at Langley to clear out suspected leakers (especially Kerry
contributors), malcontents, critics of the war or anyone else who wasn't with
the program.
Before the Iraq invasion, it was about fixing the intelligence around the
policy. Now it's about appointing yes men and enforcing loyalty. The
Bush warriors didn't want good intelligence in the first place because it would
have told them they were wrong about Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda and W.M.D.
And now they're still more concerned with turf battles than with truth-tellers
and finding someone — anyone — who can tell us where Osama is. (Osama who?)
Even Denny Hastert, the Republican speaker, scoffed at the Hayden move as a
Negroponte "power grab."
The general is a Cheney pal who stood up for the White House's right to be
unconstitutional, going along with the heinous warrantless snooping. That
makes him one of the team and ready for a promotion, or a Medal of Freedom.
He will no doubt be accommodating when Darth Cheney comes over to Langley to
lurk around the analysts and oversee the evidence building a case for sending
bombs, rather than diplomats, to Iran.
Now that we're dealing with a crazed Iranian president, dreaming of nukes and
writing an 18-page letter that sounds like an Israel-hating Islamic version of
the Rapture, wouldn't it be great if our spooks could stop fighting and go spy
on somebody?
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