The sense of lethargacy in the Body Politick
The State of the Union, or more properly the Body Politic, is fretted with a sort of lethargacy — we, as a nation, in terms of our government, are waiting for a situation to change itself to something that can be productive, and have resigned ourselves to the fact that nothing is going to be done until 2008. In terms of presidential and Congressional esteem, I compare the situation to the Congressional and Presidential period of 1931 – 1933, the last two years of Hoover’s Administration, with a bare Democratic majority that wasn’t aligned to anything as of the moment — Congress’s approval ratings were lower than Hoover’s.
George W Bush is one point off from Nixon’s low point, and has sustained the depths of presidential approval for a longer time than Truman. And we’ve gone through this sustained bottom-dropping for an awful long time. I remember the moment when it seemed to occur, when I looked up and saw that he was stalled right down into the 30s, and not about to move out of it. I started coming up with ways the nation should be restarted — an “Under 40” rule whereby a president who cannot come to that mark in his second term and through a decent stretch of time should be automatically replaced. Through all this time, any number of pundits have come out and proclaimed that Bush is experiencing, or will shortly experience, a bounce in public esteem — sometimes meted out as Bush rose from 30 percent approval to 33 percent approval, sometimes just simply meaningless. All we can do is watch in bemusement.
“It’s astonishing,” said Pat Caddell, who was President Jimmy Carter’s pollster. “It’s hard to look at the situation today and say the country is absolutely 15 miles down in the hole. The economy’s not that bad — for some people it is, but not overall. Iraq is terribly handled, but it’s not Vietnam; we’re not losing 250 people a week. . . . We don’t have that immediate crisis, yet the anxiety about the future is palpable. And the feeling about him is he’s irrelevant to that. I think they’ve basically given up on him.”
I think there is a feeling that the other shoe is about to drop somehow.
In the meantime, The Weekly Standard published a cover-item on the man less popular than Bush — Dick Cheney. The Weekly Standard being the outlet that would favor such a man. A book has been published. One that posits him as non-hugging, but gives him a… human side. And to that, the Murdoch – owned and rather silly New York Sun gives us this suggestion.
My own guess — okay, hope — is that Mr. Cheney has taken a look at the Republican presidential field and sees an opening.
Sure. I’ve always wanted to see a 50-state electoral landslide. Just imagine the day after Election Day, the headline: OBAMA PULLS 50-STATE VICTORY! Mercy, mercy me.
I mean, even a hypothetical Bush third term attempt, in a hypothetically different Constitution, stalled in the 20s in approval, would bring in Wyoming and Idaho.
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Incidentally, I know “lethargacy” is not a word, but a google search shows that I am number one with that word, so I will use it with a sense of impunity.