Reply #22: NO MORE BEATING AROUND THE BUSH

[dzika]

January 20, 2005

NO MORE BEATING AROUND THE BUSH

by Phillip Todd


Ever since John Kerry conceded the 2004 election to George Bush, those who oppose the Republican president have privately nursed various levels of despondence. It’s been better to just avoid talking to them about politics. Today, as Bush’s lavish inauguration ceremonies get underway, the Citizen fronts a piece that might be worth forwarding to those downcast liberals. Since November, the White House has emphasized the record number of voters who cast their ballot for Bush, but the Citizen’s Dan Gardner reminds us this morning that the only reason for this is because there was a record number of overall voters. With approval ratings vastly below other returning presidents, and a majority of Americans claiming they are dissatisfied “with the way things are going in the country today,” Bush should be thanking his lucky stars he’s got another four years in the bully pulpit instead of gloating. While incumbent presidents in the past fifty years have all won by significant margins—the smallest being Clinton’s 9 percent victory in 1996—Bush beat Kerry by only 2.5 percent. So it’s okay to flinch when the Bush administration claims the 2004 election results are a vote of confidence on its Iraq policy.

Gardner’s piece is most welcome to those who oppose Bush, though, because it debunks the Democrats’ nightmare scenario: a permanent shift to the right in the nation's political culture. As Gardner points out, that just isn’t happening. Those “sea of red” maps that everyone talks about don’t show that the vote split in almost half the states was 4 percent or less. Meanwhile, surveys conducted every year since 1972 show that when Americans are asked whether they consider themselves “liberal,” “conservative” or “moderate,” the most popular response is consistently “moderate.” (Well, when it isn’t “don’t know/haven’t thought about it,” that is.) Gardner quotes conservative academic James Q. Wilson, who shortly after the election wrote, “The nation did not undergo a rightward shift in 2004 any more than it had when it elected Reagan in 1980 and re-elected him in 1984.” MediaScout’s advice to Democrats: wipe away your tears and get to work. This is the last day you can feel sorry for yourselves.

http://maisonneuve.org/blog/index.php?itemid=771