Iraq/Iran: Things looking up for Bush?
Posted: Monday, November 19, 2007 9:06 AM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
White House, Security
The Washington Post's Peter Baker looks at how things seem to be looking up for Bush, but... "In many ways, the shifting political fortunes may owe as much to the absence of bad news as to any particular good news. No one lately has been indicted, botched a hurricane relief effort or shot someone in a hunting accident. Instead, pictures from Iraq show people returning to the streets as often as they show a new suicide bombing. And Bush has bolstered morale inside the West Wing and rallied his Republican base through a strategy of confrontation with the Democratic Congress, built on the expansive use of his veto pen.”
“Yet none of this has particularly impressed the public at large, which remains skeptical that anything meaningful has changed and still gives Bush record-low approval ratings. The disconnect highlights his dilemma heading into the last year of his administration: Can anything short of a profound event repair an unpopular president's public standing so late in his tenure? Can tactical victories in Washington salvage a wounded presidency?"
One other theory on why Bush isn't benefiting from the fact that there has been an absence of bad news: The country has already issued its verdict on Iraq and the Bush presidency, so there’s little he can do to change things.
