The news just keeps getting worse for the White House. The president’s approval rating hovers around 42 percent. More than 50 percent of the country has an unfavorable view of him. And 61 percent of Americans say the country is worse off because of George W. Bush’s policies and needs to move in a new direction.
But Bush backers should be most concerned not about the president’s numbers, but rather about those swirling around Congress. Every major poll shows that in a generic ballot, Americans are primed to choose Democrats over Republicans in the midterm elections. Indeed, as the Wall Street Journal reminded readers late last year, the party controlling the White House has lost an average of 24 seats in midterm elections since World War II. Democrats only need a net pickup of 15 to wrest back the House majority.
A Speaker Pelosi or a Majority Leader Reid will make the president’s job a bit tougher on the policy front, to be sure. But a Chairman Conyers atop the Judiciary Committee will try to take away the president’s job. Conyers is telegraphing his intentions: In 2005, he concluded “there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice-President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their Administration. There is at least a prima facie case that these actions that federal laws have been violated – from false statements to Congress to retaliating against Administration critics.” In other words, he is ready to pull the trigger on America’s second impeachment in eight years.
But it’s not only the polls that are worrisome for those hoping to cling to a status quo that would stave off the impeachment of George W. Bush. Bob Woodward’s latest book is adding fuel to fire, this after David Corn and Michael Isikoff stoked the flames with their broadside at Bush and Company during the summer. And now, House Republicans, after weathering the Abramoff bribery scandal, are reeling from revelations that a member of their caucus sent a series of sordid emails to a Congressional page, forcing the congressman to resign.
Add it all up, and a nightmarish November could turn into a terrible 2007 for the president.
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