I know this is a soft spot here but how in the hell did Bush manage a 90+ percent approval rating?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob1.htm

11/5-6/01 89 9 2
10/8-9/01 92 6 1
9/25-27/01 90 6 4
9/13/01 86 12 2
9/6-9/01 55 41 3
7/26-30/01 59 38 3
5/31 - 6/3/01 55 40 6
4/19-22/01 63 32 5
3/22-25/01 58 33 8
2/21-25/01 55 23 22
.

Highest approval:

10/8-9/01 92 6 1
.

Lowest approval:

10/8-11/08
23 73 4


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Bush had just allowed almost 3000 people to be murdered on his watch. And everyone pretty much knew the little prick had just stolen the presidential election with the help of his scummy little brother. But what in the hell were some of you thinking?

Was it the part where he told everyone to go out shopping and forget our problems?

How was this scam pulled off?

Clowns to the left of me. Jokers to the right.

Don

[virgogal]

1. Who cares? It's yesterday's news.

[Deep13]

2. Fear makes people authoritarian. nt

[Fumesucker]

3. We need to look forward, not backward..

-Proud ten percenter..

[Hello_Kitty]

4. MSM was licking his ass instead of doing their jobs.

If that shit had happened under a Dem President the first question on everyone's lips would be "How did he let this happen?" But no, our "liberal" media never showed us the footage of Bush reading a children's book with a deer-in-headlights look on his face. That didn't come out until Fahrenheit 9-11.

Incompetence: IOKIYAR

[walldude]

11. Shit they would have hung Clinton or Obama on the WH lawn

if 9/11 had happened on their watch. They impeached Clinton for lying about a blowjob in the oval office. What was the punishment for lying us into a war that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people? Oh yeah the Congressional Medal of Freedom. :eyes:

The media is half our problem. :toast:

[Greyhound]

5. The same way any American President gets ratings that high, he started a war.

We loves us some killing!:shrug:

[lumberjack_jeff]

6. "Some of you?"

The literal answer to your question is team spirit.

[ecstatic]

7. They didn't poll me

I never had faith in him. Not for one second. I was with McKinney: What did he know and when did he know it?

[villager]

13. +1

n/t

[Gman2]

8. It is always

"It is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of their leaders. That is easy. All you have to tell them is that they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.""

[Individualist]

9. I don't know anything about polling report, but other sources show they're inaccurate

One of the sources, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2005/04/25/GR2005042500945.html, shows ratings as I remember them. Bush's approval ratings weren't good until after 9/11.

This is also confirmed by the following:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2009/jan/16/george-bush-approval-ratings-america

http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB114226947992696718.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6038436.stm

[LostInAnomie]

10. Seriously!? You think some of us were Bush supporters?

I've said it on here 1000 times and this time I'm glad to actually say it: DU is not representative of the country as a whole. We were smart enough to dislike and distrust Bush from 2000 onward.

The 2000's were a turning point in American politics. Before 9/11, the thought of turning the deaths of thousands of American citizens into a political football was unthinkable. If the Bush administration has taught us anything it's that EVERYTHING can be used as a political weapon. There is a normal human reaction to rally around the flag when your country is attacked. Bushco was cynical enough to use that rallying as a cudgel against political enemies and to invade other countries. The "9/12 mindset" will never happen again.

[Soylent Brice]

12. see post #2. that and the fact that there are a lot of uneducated and informed people

there are a lot of uneducated and misinformed people in this country.

[rufus dog]

14. the only way to answer it would be to look at the detail of the poll

Remember, Obama's polling includes the South where he performs poorly, so if the South is over sampled in a poll Obama can easily be made out to have poor numbers.

Conversely if the Bush polls were over sampling a region you may get a false high. 90% approval seems ridiculous. If you take the far left and assume they might be 10% of the population that would mean he would need to run a clean sweep of everyone else. If, based upon some patriotic reason he was able to get a percent of the 10% then it is still almost statistically impossible to get to 90%. Seeing that about 10% seem to be against war for ANY reason, I don't think Bush would get anyone from that group. So we are talking about a clean sweep. Now since I tend to fall into the next group, who was O.K. with going into Afghanistan but still thought Bush was a worthless tool, and tend to think that a large % of those just to the right of the far left felt the same way, it makes it impossible to get to 90%

So rather asking what some of us were thinking you may want to dig into the poll. Because there is no way in hell that he got a 90% approval rating with an accurate sampling. 80% would be a stretch, low 70's likely realistic.

[pnwmom]

15. I think immediately afterwards there were a lot of people that were glad

he didn't immediately nuke Iraq or Iran or something . . . .

[Smarmie Doofus]

16. Shock. Confusion. Poor reportage. And the natural.....

... inclination to back the c in chief in an international emergency.

First thing I thought about when I heard about the 9-11 planes: "Those poor people."

Second thing: "Ugh. A second term for Bush for sure."

Nothing like a war to spike the prez' poll #s. It worked for Bush Sr. also.

[EFerrari]

17. The same way he got his cousin to call the election for him at Fox.

We have an oligarchy. We just don't seem to remember it most days.

[spanone]

18. terrorists killed americans... a presidential dog would have been popular

[demosincebirth]

19. That was one of our dumb times

[Iggo]

20. Cuz it was time to get our war on, and...

...Americans get a boner for blowing shit up.

[Berry Cool]

21. You assume too much.

First of all, not everyone blamed Bush for 9/11 any more than they would have automatically blamed Clinton had it happened on his watch. They did not yet know, for example, that Bush just plain ignored the PDB he got back in August that said "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." And no, not everybody "pretty much knew the little prick had just stolen the presidential election with the help of his scummy little brother." Some people really thought what happened was fair. I'd wager most of us saw it for what it was, but that doesn't mean we were in the majority at the time.

I wasn't happy Bush ended up as president, but even I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt at first. As in, "Well, this is going to test him like nothing else. I'm not convinced he can handle it, but if he proves himself capable of dealing with it, then I will have to change my opinion about him, I guess."

I was like most loyal Americans, except for Rush Limbaugh. See, I didn't want my president to fail, because I thought if my president failed it would mean my country failed. So really, I wanted to believe he could deal with everything and I was 100 percent behind him if he proved himself more capable than I thought he was. Of course, he didn't, and then later all the true crap of what he had ignored came out, and then he decided to invade Iraq come hell or high water...and the rest is history.

Even so, I think it's silly to ask people HERE how Bush had a 90+ approval rating in ONE poll in October of 2001. I mean, it's not like DU was polled. We don't know if that particular poll selected a single regular here. So it's not like we have to explain it. I'm just explaining it in terms of what I think the average American attitude was in October of '01. Namely: "Oh boy, are we in deep crap. Whether or not I like the guy who's president now, I hope he proves himself up to the task."

I don't remember exactly when he said to go shopping. That WAS dumb.

[closeupready]

22. 9/11 seemed like the end of the world.

In a time of national emergency, people rally around their leader. Basic human psychology.

[gratuitous]

23. You're right, it was a scam

The numbers lasted about as long as snow on a July day. What did it mean in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001 to say that you "supported" the president? Not that anyone asked me, but there are probably as many reasons as percentage points for why someone would say that they supported the president in October 2001. It could be an expression of solidarity with other shocked Americans. It could be defiance of terrorists and their tactics. It could be the momentary period of shock as people are processing an incomprehensible situation, and the default setting of support for king and country (figuratively speaking) is expressed.

It is, however, indisputable that this momentary period of unity was exploited time and again by the Bush administration ("you're either with us or the terrorists") and the mass media (Bush was constantly extolled as "the popular wartime president") until folks were sick of it. The current cannabalistic state of the Republican party is the inevitable result of playing people's emotions so incessantly. If the Republicans were honest with themselves (no, really), they'd blame their current fix on George W. Bush and his administration. Because that's who flushed them down the toilet.