How The Numbers Add Up

Today President Bush introduced his new press secretary Tony ("Bush is an embarrassment") Snow, who is replacing Scott (The Human Piñata) McClellan, to the White House press corps. That was supposed to be the story of the day. That was before we found out that Karl Rove has testified yet again before the grand jury. And before we got a whiff of Bush's latest poll numbers.

It's the poll numbers I want to discuss, because if you're in the White House or a member of Congress who's a Republican, these numbers can't help but make you very uneasy (and if you work for a Republican congressman, they can't help but make you pull out your resume for a quick update before shipping it off to K Street):

• 57% of Americans polled now disapprove of the job Bush is doing as president.
• 67% think the country is headed in the wrong direction.
• 77% are uneasy about the economy.
• 65% of those polled disapprove of the job that Congress (controlled by the Republicans) is doing.

Even Fox News is starting to realize that the ground is giving way beneath the Republicans. They quote John Gorman of the group Opinion Dynamics as saying: "It seems clear that many Republicans, while they may still like and support George Bush, are growing uneasy with what may happen to their candidates — and the policies they support — in the November elections."

Fox News states that "Approval among Republicans is below 70 percent for the first time of Bush’s presidency. Two-thirds (66 percent) approve of Bush’s job performance today, down almost 20 percentage points from this time last year when 84 percent of Republicans approved. Among Democrats, 11 percent approve today, while 14 percent approved last April."

Let's repeat the salient point in that paragraph: Bush's job approval rating is down almost 20 percentage points in a year among Republicans.

Meanwhile, what are the Democrats doing? Now, there's an old saying that when your adversary is self-destructing, the best thing you can do is to step aside and let him do it. But is that really what we want the Democrats to be doing right now? Standing around waiting to take over control of Congress by virtue of being the political party that the American people despises least?

I'd like to see some Democrats step up and tell us where they'll take the country if they get control of the House and Senate in the upcoming midterm elections. I'd like to hear what ideas they might have for dealing with the seemingly endless war in Iraq. Did you know that, by the time of the midterm elections in November, we will have been in Iraq for as long as we fought World War II?

Think about that while you ponder the numbers.

Tom Moran