To paraphrase William Shakespeare, “Now is the summer of our discontent.” Nowhere is this more apparent than in the latest Zogby International poll (conducted June 20-22) which finds George W. Bush at the lowest ebb of his presidency. The president’s job approval rating stands at an abysmal 44 percent. The disapproval is across the board: nearly two-thirds of all respondents dislike Bush’s handling of the Iraq War, jobs and the economy, education, the environment, and Social Security and Medicare. Moreover, on Bush’s two signature issues–the war on terror and taxes–his performance has wandered into negative territory: 50 percent disapprove of his management of terrorism; 62 percent dislike his tax policies.
In many ways, this season of discontent resembles 1992, when voters turned on another President Bush. That year, 69 percent said the country was “worse off” under the forty-first president’s economic stewardship than it had been during the Reagan years. But the more apt comparison may not be 1992, but the period immediately following World War Two. Back then, the returning veterans rejected ideological dreamers and wanted a strong dose of realism in their leaders. The veterans who entered politics -- best represented by John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, both of whom won House seats in 1946 -- were moderate and pragmatic. Nixon, for example, ran on a platform of “practical liberalism” as the “antidote
New Deal idealism.” Both men captured the “Vital Center,” a phrase coined by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. to describe the emergence of an era where winners extolled their management skills and downplayed any ideological predilections. The late CBS News commentator Eric Severeid once described Nixon and Kennedy as sharp, ambitious, opportunistic, but devoid of strong convictions -- unlike the young men of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal who “dreamt beautiful and foolish dreams about the perfectibility of man, cheered Roosevelt, and adored the poor.”
The present disillusionment is ushering in another new era of political realism. The seeds were sown in 2004, when moderates and independents voted for John F. Kerry over George W. Bush. Moderates backed Kerry by a margin of 54 percent to 45 percent, while independents voted for the Democratic candidate by a much smaller but still significant 49 percent to 48 percent margin. While Bush won–thanks to overwhelming GOP support (93 percent) and strong backing from white evangelicals (78 percent)–his poor showing among moderates and independents was a sure sign of trouble ahead. And the troubles have come. Today, only a third of independents and moderates would back Bush in a rerun of the 2004 presidential election. Iraq is a primary source of their discontent: 70 percent of moderates and 68 percent of independents dislike Bush’s handling of the war, and 63 percent of both groups say the war was not worth the cost in American lives.
But the political center’s disenchantment with Bush is not confined to Iraq. On issue after issue, moderate and independent discontent exceeds the national figures. For example, while 61 percent of all Americans disapprove of Bush’s handling of Iraq, among independents and moderates, those figures rise to 68 percent and 70 percent respectively. Similarly, when asked about foreign policy, 61 percent of all respondents disapprove. But 73 percent of independents and 70 percent of moderates dislike the president’s foreign policy management. Likewise on jobs and the economy, Social Security and Medicare, education, the environment, and taxes, large majorities of independents and moderates disagree with Bush. In each case, the political center’s discontent is higher than the national average. Even when asked about Bush’s handling of the war on terror, most moderates and independents disapprove (see Table 1). No wonder 57 percent of independents and 60 percent of moderates think the country is headed in the wrong direction, as compared to 53 percent of all respondents. What this data makes clear is that Arthur Schelesinger’s Vital Center has morphed into the Lost Center.
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