Is Bush doing a good job as president.??
 

I recently saw an article about the approval rating of our president, they stated it's around 34%. Now this seems very low so I was wondering what the FOFC opinion is..

Well, at least you put a trout option. :)

I think you should have made this title "The American Public Hates Bush!!!!!"

That would have gone over much better.

Truman's approval rating was like this during his tenure as president and he turned out just fine. Approval ratings are for losers.

In this case that certainly seems to be true! :p

I've heard that sometime he just "zones out" -- but it *looks like* he's working!

I'm sure the recent news that he was warned about the fact that Katrina could well cause the type of havoc that did occur on the day before the storm hit will affect his approval rating, considering he played the ignorance line up till now...

I think he's doing a pretty crappy job, but I might just vote yes to balance things out. I mean, he's a medicre-to-poor, but some of you people act like this is the Grant administration and he's the devil incarnate. Pretty ridiculous.

Words of wisdom from Schmidty. I take back everything bad I ever said about Yzerman.

Mr. Yzerman and I are honored.

I voted no, but that doesn't mean a Democrat would do any better.

They're all losers.

just wait till the FEMA/Bush pre-Katrina briefing video makes the rounds.

My thoughts exactly and pretty much the only reason I voted yes. :D

Someone once said 'you're only as good as the people around you." Bush is paying the price today for bad personel choices and cronyism. Plus, I think he ran and was elected as a 'social conservative' and really turned out to be a 'corporate, country-club' republican. So a large chunk of his base is saying 'see ya.'

Yzerman is too good and too pure a soul to support Bush. He would vote a resounding "NO!" to this pole. I am sorry, but it's true.

Yzerman for President! (with, of course, Fedorov as Veep)

We would have to by-pass that whole born in the U.S. requirement, but I think The People would be willing to do that for Steve Yzerman. He is one of the greatest leaders in sports. Think what he could do for this country. I am sure he would also have room for Petr Klima in his administration.

I would rate him as the worst president of my lifetime.

Worst, or Most Incompetent? I suppose I can understand worst (not sure though), but there's no way he's more incompetent than Jimmy Carter.

One big problem...getting up and down the stairs for Air Force One would not be very pretty with ice skates on, so I think this would be a very bad idea.

With the news today of shocking new confidential video proving that Bush could have prevented the levee failures, I don't see how anybody could approve of him.

I love the logic at work here (and think it explains a lot of the current problems): even folks who want to support the President think he is not doing a good job, but just to stick it to folks who believe the same thing they'll lie about their public position on the matter. For what effect? Not to send a signal to the person they feel is doing a bad job -- strictly to skew the statistics to reflect a result that neither side believes is accurate.

Says a lot about a person who would take that kind of approach, and is depressing to boot.

I'm confused. :confused:

Are you assuming that I want to support Bush? I didn't even vote for the guy this time (or Kerry), and I'm certainly not a Republican. So what are you insinuating?

(If I misunderstood what you meant, sorry)

I don't know about ignorance. He spoke months ahead of the time that One of the largest potential National Disasters looming over the United States was a Cat 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans. As far as him learning the day before...what expectation is there in terms of a presidential reaction to that notification? Does he call Mike Brown, and ask him if he's doing his job? Does he call the governor and tell that by God if the levies break he's going to have Federal authorities assume control of the crisis, whether she wants to relinquish it or not?

You misunderstood. You posted that even though you feel that he is doing a bad job, you would vote that he is doing a good job. The reason? "Balance" -- except no balance is possible, because the people voting no don't secretly believe he's doing a good job. It's an illogical position, and one that reveals a lot about the underpinnings of a person's political philosophy, I would argue.

Bush makes Carter look like a Mensa high level guru. Carter was an excellent foreign policy man, he just sucked at internal policy. Bush on the other hand...shit in one hand, put his positive qualities in the other and see which one fills first....I'll give you a roll of TP....


Bush is by far the worst President, with the worst administration that I can even think of. Granted I'm not a historian and there may be worse ones during the 1800's, but as for the last century? Bush leads the "I'm a dumbass Git" category.

Ok, I understand, although I still think that he's not nearly as bad as a lot of people do. It's like a lynch mob mentality at this point. You have people taking facts that really are legitimate, getting pumped up emotionally and then pumping up other people emotionally and escalating the situation, until eventually Bush is like Pol Pot or something.

There HAS to be some balance in my opinion.

Anyway, sorry I misinterpreted what you said. And now that this becoming a "serious" political discussion, I will show myself the door. :)

No problem. The balance occurs in the wording of the poll (and is actually favors a bit of a positive spin): do you think he's doing a good job? If a person's public stance (reflected by the poll) doesn't represent their actual stance, it damages that balance by introducing erroneous data.

Actually, that briefing in the video was 4 days before the hurricane hit. It clearly states that there would be widespread damage if the levees broke. That goes directly against the statement Bush made after the damage where he said that no one predicted that the levees would fail and that it caught them offguard in their ability to respond.

Nice job by Dutch to try and deflect attention away from the fact that this isn't related to the response after the hurricane or the ability to prevent the levees being breached. :rolleyes:

This all brings up a whole other set of discussions. Would people have taken the evacuation order more seriously had the President weighed in on the matter, rather than just the usual local notifiers? If the disaster scenarios regarding a levee breach were discussed, why was the decision made to do apparently nothing to mitigate it. Instead, from all appearances, after the briefing Bush went back to Crawford to finish his vacation and just hope for the best.

That scenario sounds a whole lot like the one surrounding the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike America" briefing. It was spelled out what was possible to happen, yet the Administration acted completely suprised once it did actually happen.

Bush lied? NO WAY! I'm shocked! The saddest part is that the people around him are so pathetic that they let him continue to embarrass himself with lies like this.

Also, the Admin. saying no one expected the levees to break? I think it was pretty much a foregone conclusion based on all of the reading and forecasts I've done.

How out of touch these people are.

Ah, the conservative Bush slappies. How I would love to spend but a few minutes in their world where things like facts and reality just don't mean a darn thing. It must be a magical, mystical world full of elves, gremlins, and eskimos!

minus the your/you're issue, I agree with every word of this. The apocolypse must be right around the corner.


Additionally, I agree with Kodos in that I feel pretty damn strongly that Bush is the worst president of my lifetime. I wasn't alive when Nixon was in office though.

It's funny - because both sides spin doctor, talk out of both sides of their mouths, etc., but you would swear that the administration in power (whether it be Republican or Democrat) invented the entire process.

Whoever wins, it's 4 years of the opposite side swearing for change, indignant calls for justice, etc. Then the opposite team wins and we all swap sides.

In the meantime, hopefully we all have jobs and can feed, clothe and shelter our families. The political posturing on both sides grew tiresome sometime around the ancient Greeks.

I think that people claiming the president was pleading ignorance are mis interpreting his statement.

He said no one predicted that the levees would fail. Since he is on record months before citing the potential disaster of a Hurricane hitting New Orleans, that really doesn't add up. I think he was saying that no one knew that the levies were going to fail during Hurricane Katrina. That was how I interpreted the statement at the time. Because honestly anyone with the History Channel, National Geographic , or CNN for that matter, knew what would happen if a big hurricane hit New Orleans. IIRC Katrina was pretty severely downgraded by the time it reached landfall. When Bush was briefed four days ahead of time Katrina was a raging monster headed for New Orleans. In the intervening days, it diminished to the point that most didn't feel the levies were going to be an issue.

My point is that I think those going after the President on this issue are essentially mis-quoting him in an attempt to discredit him. They are at very least narrowly construing his words, in a manner that best suits their purposes, without really considering that they might be wrong.

Personally, this is the first time I've heard that the President of the U.S. is personally responsible for FEMA foul-ups (and FEMA has a long and proud history of SNAFUs long before Bush took office). Sure you can take Bush to task for appointing a Texas pal who apparently was in way over his head...but then Clinton did the same thing when he appointed one of his Arkansas cronies as the head of the agency. I think there is plenty of blame to be spread around here -- in particular to "School Bus" Nagan, who was on the Today Show recently, whining about how the Director of the National Hurricane Center didn't personally call him to say how bad a CAT 5 Hurricane would be if it hit N'awlins (sorry, Ray...it's not his job), and Governor Blanco, who perfected her "deer in the headlights" expression throughout the entire ordeal.

There are a lot of high profile negative things occurring that impact the immediate perception of success or failure. I'll be curious to see how the administration is viewed in 20 years. I think a large part of how he'll be viewed historically will be how the Iraq war concludes.

Domestically, from a personal impact perspective, I really have no major complaints. I do think Dick Cheney as VP was one of the worst personnel decisions ever made and altered the whole legacy of his presidency. Pick someone different and I think the whole administration performs completely differently.

What he said.

And don't lie about you knew and what you didn't know beforehand after a catastrophe that is the worst natural disaster in the US for a generation.

There's a saying about don't lie if you are likely to be found out: if you are the president of the world's biggest democratic power, this should be doubly so.

Dola,

And obviously he personally could not have done anything to reinforce the levees - but more could have been done publicly in advance, and this video makes the seemingly shambolic and slow (I say 'seemingly' as obviously I am far removed from NO) response even less forgivable.

Even before his numbers tanked, I felt that we wouldn't know what kind of President Bush was for a good twenty to thirty years. His legacy will be determined largely by the progress of Democracy in the Middle East.

Wow.

Just... wow.

I can't... wow.

How on earth can you say he is being misquoted? Here is a copy of his EXACT statement from his appearence on GMA: ""I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." hxxp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/23/AR2006012301711.html

The levees didn't breech until after the Hurricane had passed. In fact, most of the news orgs covering Katrina had been commenting about how N'awlins had dodged the bullet for the most part until they noticed that the water level was starting to rise.

*edit*
Of course, we all know Bush ordered the Army Corp of Engineers to blow up the levees after he saw that mother nature hadn't done her job and wiped out the minority population in the area.

*dola edit*
Make that Cheney...since we all know he is the Shadow President. Bush is just his puppet.

The point is that the levees did breach, just as was described in the briefings. How could he say that no one could have anticipated they would be breached when that was the exact scenario raised to him just a few days before?

Thanks for adding to the intelligent discourse with your edits.

Then why the hell didn't the mayor of New Orleans evacuate his city? All you saw on the news for days before the hurricane hit was how the city would be devastated by a direct hit. Anytime a hurricane gets close down here, the state and local goverments order and coordinate evacuations from the Florida Keys.

I'm confused? What does that have to do with Bush's statements?

He was briefed that there was a possibility that the levees could be breached causing massive damage. He afterwards said no one could have predicted the levees would be breached.

If there were one million people in NO, or no one at all, the levees were still breached.

The Army Corp of Engineers has been warning about the levees in New Orleans breaching during a major hurricane since the mid to late 1980s.

If you want to play a stupid game of "gotcha" with Bush, please feel free.

Ray Nagan has been caught in a good number of misstatements or outright lies about his city's preparation and response to the disaster. Where's the outrage toward him? Or the governor of the state?

It's there, but the title of this thread is "Is Bush doing a good job as president".

Hmm. I guess this REALLY points to how well the president is doing. The only approval votes he can get are pity votes. :D

Well, this thread has gone exactly where we all knew it would end up. Only the typists have changed.

I'd be interested in reading a good argument for a "yes" vote other than the stupid balance argument made earlier.

I like Ray Nagin just because of his "Chocolate City" speech