President’s missteps numerous, painful
What a difference a war makes. And dishonesty makes. And arrogance and insensitivity make.
After the death toll for American soldiers in Iraq passed 2,000, after President Bush oddly nominated his unqualified friend to the U.S. Supreme Court and after his vice president’s chief of staff was indicted in an illegal CIA leak, Bush’s job approval ratings in one poll hit their lowest mark for him and the lowest for a two-term president in nearly half a century. Except for Richard Nixon.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 60 percent of Americans disapprove of how the incumbent is performing. Zogby and CBS News polls found similar discontent.
What I’d like to know is: What are those 40 percent or fewer Americans seeing that the majority of us aren’t? The president has offered America misstep after misstep since his first claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which it didn’t. His missteps continued when he stood aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln two years ago and declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, a claim made about a decade too soon.
His other mistakes are too numerous and painful to continue to catalog. But consider this: The Republican-controlled Congress that follows his plans like Stepford wives may approve a budget that attacks America’s poorest again by trimming Medicare and Medicaid, the health and sustenance programs for the poor and elderly.
They would continue to hurt poor children and affect senior health care rather than discontinue planned tax breaks to people with more money. What will the money be used for? To fund drilling for oil and natural gas in the nation’s last wilderness: Alaska. Yes, we need to become less dependent on Middle Eastern oil, but American children, who are increasingly born into poverty, can’t drink oil. And seniors can’t take a spoonful of oil to lower their blood pressure.
The president’s mistakes are not limited to those in the judicial and global arenas. His loyalty to mediocre employees, most famously former FEMA Director Michael Brown, was revisited as Brown’s e-mails written during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina were released last week.
With each passing day, it appears that Washington legislators become more and more distant from the people they represent. No one has become more disconnected than President Bush.