WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A majority of Americans are more likely to vote for a candidate in November's congressional elections who opposes President Bush, and 58 percent consider his second term a failure so far, according to a poll released Thursday.
Fewer people consider Bush to be honest and trustworthy now than did a year ago, and 53 percent said they believe his administration deliberately misled the public about Iraq's purported weapons program before the U.S. invasion in 2003, the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found.
Pollsters interviewed 1,006 American adults Friday through Sunday. Most questions in the survey had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. (Poll)
Bush is preparing for his State of the Union address, set for next week, and told reporters Thursday that he is "looking forward" to campaigning for Republicans in November's elections. (Full story)
But the latest poll indicated Americans remain in a pessimistic mood.
Fifty-eight percent of those polled said Bush's second term has been a failure so far, while 38 percent said they consider it a success. A smaller number -- 52 percent -- consider his entire presidency a failure to date, with 46 percent calling it successful.
Americans are in a pessimistic mood? And 58 percent consider Bush's second term a failure? WOW! That's a surprising result--and this result has been released just one year into his second term, and less than ten months before the midterm elections. In addition, over half the country believes his entire presidency is a failure to date--at 52 percent.
So what does this mean? There have been a lot of uninvestigated scandals, lies, cover-ups, and corruption that the Bush administration has been connected with--Jack Abramoff lobbying connection, illegal NSA domestic spying, Iraq WMDs, Valerie Plame, FEMA, the coal mine disasters and lack of safety regulations, Cheney's secret energy policy meetings--the list just goes on. All of these scandals have steadily eroded the public's lack of trust in the Bush administration, and has eroded President Bush's job performance records. That is what we're seeing here in these poll results. What is even more amazing is that the Bush White House continues their PR-spin of lies and deception--even in the face of these poll results. Consider this response:
Bush defended his performance Thursday, pointing to an improved economy despite higher prices for gasoline, heating oil and natural gas. He said the November elections would be about "peace and prosperity."
"We've got a record, and a good one," he said. "That's what I intend to campaign on and explain to people why I made the decisions I made, and why they're necessary to protect the American people, and why they've been necessary to keep this economy strong -- and why the policies we've got will keep this economy strong in the future."
But 51 percent of those polled said they were more likely to vote for a candidate in congressional elections who opposes Bush, while 40 percent said they were likely to vote for a candidate who backs the president.
Bush's own approval rating remained at 43 percent, unchanged since mid-December, according to results released earlier this week. Another 54 percent disapproved of his job performance, that survey found.
Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed in the latest poll -- 62 percent -- said they were dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States, while 35 percent said they were satisfied.
And 64 percent said things in the United States have gotten worse in the past five years, while 28 percent said things have improved.
For the first time since Bush took office in 2001, a majority of those polled said the president -- who campaigned as "a uniter, not a divider" -- has been a divisive leader. Fifty-four percent called Bush a divider, while 41 percent called him a uniter.
Just over a third -- 34 percent -- said Bush had a clear plan for solving the nation's problems, and 44 percent agreed that he cared about the needs of people like them and shared their values.
A narrow majority of 51 percent said they consider Bush to be a strong and decisive leader, compared with 48 percent who disagreed. Although those totals fall within the margin of sampling error, they mark a decline from a year ago, when 61 percent called the president strong and decisive.
There is so much more to this story, but you can pretty much get the idea--the American public is starting to wake up and discover the emperor has no clothes--he hasn't been wearing any clothes for the past five years now. And as more revelations of these scandals continue to be revealed, they will continue to erode public support for the Bush White House. Remember, we have Tom DeLay's money laundering trial, the continued investigation and indictments into the Jack Abramoff scandal, and the Scooter Libby / Valerie Plame trial coming up this year. The revealing information in these three scandals will cause some nasty political fallout on the Bush White House. And who knows what else will come out with the illegal NSA wiretapping and domestic spying? I also have to ask, how many Republican congressmen are willing to allow the president to help campaign with them? I can't say, but as these scandals continue to be at the forefront of the news, they are not going to help the Republicans in November's midterm elections. They are not going to help the President's political and public image.
ZCharlie: The Bush administration has been scandal free? Excuse me? What blanket have you been under for the past five years? The Bush administration has been plagued with scandals--much of it caused by their own incompetence, and their refusal to accept any blame for their mistakes. First, energy policy scandal where VP Dick Cheney refuses to provide any records of who he talked to on his energy panel--now I didn't expect him to divulge the minutes of these meetings, or the content, but Cheney has even refused to tell us WHO he talked to. Iraq is scandal-filled mess. Scooter Libby, and perhaps others in the White House leaked Valerie Plames name to the press, and no Libby is on trial for lying to the feds and obstruction of Justice. Libby worked as chief of staff for Cheney. There is the Downing Street memos and the La Republica stories detailing how the administration markedted bad intelligence for their desire to go to war in Iraq--don't even ask about the incompetence of the reconstruction and occuptation of Iraq, which has caused this insurgency to grow. There is FEMA, and the incompetence of the administration's inability to respond to the Katrina disaster--and the administration refuses to provide records or White House aids to testify before a Republican-controlled Congress in investigating what went wrong in the wake of Katrina. There's the illegal NSA domestic spying on Americans--now called "terrorist surveillance program" by the White House, which has circumvented the FISA courts in their desire to domestically spy on Americans. And now there is the Abramoff scandal, where the Bush White House refuses again to provide records of Abramoff's visits, lobbying, or the pictures of Bush and Abramoff to the Republican-controlled Congress. You want more scandals? How about the dregulation of mining, and the laxing of mine safety, the cutting of mine safety budget, which has allowed the mining companies to reduce their own safety programs within the mines? Remember the "the Jan. 2 explosion at the Sago Mine that killed 12 miners and the conveyer belt fire on Thursday that killed 2 miners at the Aracoma Alma Mine?" How much do you want to bet that those mines were not adequately inspected because of a lack of safety inspectors due to budget cuts? And what was the administration's response to the Congressional investigation regarding safety in mines? David Dye, acting administrator of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, walked out of the Senate subcommittee hearings on mine safety. Are you telling me that's not a scandal?
ReplyDeleteNow maybe the Bush administration did not have anything to do with the mine safety hearings and the recent disasters. But the administration is responsible for these disasters. It is the lack of accountability for any mistakes, the arrogance of executive powers over that of the legislative or judicial branches of our government, and the utter contempt that this administration has for the laws, and the idea of our government's use of checks and balances in keeping power diffused among the three branches that has caused this Bush White House to behave in the selfish, arrogant, and despicable way they have been for the last five years. Thier behavior and incompetence has filtered down througout the executive branch of our government. If you can't seem to understand that, then you're just as ignorant as the current fools residing in our White House