Bush Roars into the 20s

Via: Whiskey Bar.

A new New York Times/CBS poll (PDF) shows Bush’s favorability rating has stepped off a cliff and is falling into the rarefied atmosphere of the twenties, where so few Presidents have gone before; Carter, Nixon, Truman, Bush I: A veritable litany of the most successful Presidents of our time. Bush must be so proud.

But the ride doesn’t stop here. Informal AOL polling (which though not accurately and randomly framed have HUGE sample sizes) indicates that fully 2/3rd of people expect Bush to wind up lower than all of them. The lowest favorability on record for a President is Truman’s 22%. I’ve long predicted that Bush would finish his term – if he finishes it – in the mid-20s. Could it be that, with conservatives trying to maintain the reputation of their movement and some even now calling him a LIBERAL(?!), he could be abandoned even by them? Could he wind up in the teens, or even single digits? Would Congress still be reluctant to impeach him, or even question his worst extra-Constitutional excesses, at that point? Could cooperation to bring down Bush between the left and the right become possible?

What the Independence and continuing power (the guy is prepping another goddamn stupid war for Cristsake!) of even a politically dead President demonstrates to me is that the Presidential system is seriously flawed. Americans’ lack of a no-confidence system is turning out to be a major political flaw. We can’t seem to use impeachment, it’s too criminalized and stigmatized a process for the purpose of political removal, but we have no other way to remove a chief executive who has lost the confidence of not just the majority of people, but increasingly, of his own party.

How much can possibly be accomplished in the next 2 1/2 years with Bush in office, even with a Democratic Congress? Bush may be crotcheting along in the 20s or teens, suddenly issuing vetoes for the first time (or worse just issuing signing statements), and refusing to implement Congressional laws while having no viable political base, but still retaining the powers of the Presidency. Even worse can be having a President so popular than he dominates, ignores, or even dissolves the legislature: for a while that seemed to be our fate, and if you ask some Republicans in Congress, it seems so even now. Senator Specter, hardly a liberal, said, "institutionally, the presidency is walking
  all over Congress." An overreaching President is how many dictatorships and military coups have been generated in the less developed countries around the world (and especially Latin America) to which we have exported American constitutional design, including a strong Presidency. As Bush roars into the twenties, he may be more dangerous to American democracy than ever.