Et tu, Fox?

by DemFromCT

You know Bush and the chickenhawks are having a bad week when Fox starts worrying out loud about the prospects of success:

E.D. Hill, one of the "Fox & Friends" morning show anchors, said she thought the Iraq war "was a justified one" but now worries "that there's not a plan to actually win that ground war."

"Well, E.D., I can assure you that's not the case," Bartlett assured her. Allowing that it's been a "bumpy process" with "difficult days," he asserted: "We have the right strategy to prevail."

Hill was not reassured by this assurance. "I guess I'm not convinced," she replied.

Nor, it seems, is most of the country. A nationwide poll released Monday by American Research Group showed Bush's approval rating at 36 percent -- a new low that, if accurate, would put him in the unhappy company of his father just before his 1992 loss to Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter before his loss to Ronald Reagan. Antiwar demonstrators dog Bush at his ranch and at every stop on the road, and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) has said we "should start figuring out how we get out of" Iraq. Constitutional negotiators are bickering, and some talk of civil war.

Under that dark cloud, the White House yesterday morning rushed to distribute umbrellas.

BTW, the 36% refers to all adults (it's 38% for registered voters) and for consistency I've been using the higher number. But if the media wants to quote the lower 36%, who am I to stop them?

In the meantime, everyone has noticed the media is not to be trusted for war news.

The U.S. public's confidence that the military and the media keep them informed about national security issues has eroded significantly over the past six years, according to a new poll that shows 60 percent of Americans believe they do not get enough information about military matters to make educated decisions.

So when Bush goes off on a totally new tangeant for why we're in Iraq (keeping up with the news and the polls, you at the DLC?) as he did yesterday, the NY Times editorial board has to call him on it (President Bush's loss of faith). Hey, even the WaPo chickenhawks aren't too happy (Constitution on the brink).

Ladies and gentlemen, sometimes cognitive dissonance just gets too much even for the Borg. Perhaps Mr. Bush has just had a very important Joseph Welch moment, with the critics all playing welch. We're they're because we're there? At long last, have you no shame? Whatever your favorite analogy, something interesting is happening because of Bush's showpiece Iraqi constitution failing to live up to the inflated expectations the WH has engendered... or, maybe, the reality-based commun ity was right all along.

Either way, the WH (and not its critics) has a problem.

Comments

[DemFromCT]

I love this part from Milbank's piece:

But Bartlett spent his tour of the airwaves almost entirely on the defensive.

CBS's Harry Smith: "You have almost two-thirds of the American people thinking the war in Iraq is going badly."

NBC's Matt Lauer: "The Iraqis have once again failed to meet a deadline for a final draft of the constitution."

CNN's Miles O'Brien: "Doesn't look like much progress has been made there."

And everybody wanted to know about Hagel, and everybody got the same answer. "He's a decorated Vietnam War veteran," Bartlett said. "But we couldn't disagree more with his assessment."

[demtom]

Just to reinforce the ARG poll, Harris came out today with a 40% approve/58% disapprove -- not quite as juicy as 36%, but well into the doomed zone for a president. It's going to be hard for anyone to take Rasmussen or Gallup's goosed numbers seriously with these figures out there.

I wish someone would point out two technical things about Bush's sudden trip to the mountain west (apart from the substantive -- and disgraceful -- "we have to stay because of the people we've lost so far" rhetoric). First: Bush was literally forced to leave his "home state" because the political pressure was getting too much. Second: he chose (purely by accident, no doubt) one of the few places in the country where Survey USA says Mr. I-Don't-Care-About-Polls still gets respectable numbers. It's reminiscent of Nixon in the latter Watergate days, when he only appeared in "safe" venues.

[Rick B]

E. D. Hill is right. There is not strategy to win in Iraq. And you know why?

The Republicans can't find that page in the Bible and seem unable to bend the "Original Intent" of the Consititution to cover a preemptory and unnecessary war in the Middle East designed to secure strategic supples of oil.

Hell. They can't even find a reference to "Oil Fields" in the Bible or the Constitution from Philidephia!

Is it any wonder that they have no strategy?

[donna]

Get to work and get those non-voters registered already! And then GOTV!!!!!

[Mimikatz]

Bush's latest rationale (redeeming the honor of the fallen by increasing their numbers) reminds me of the shift in Nixon's war aims to getting back the POWs, who were only there in the first place because of the war, and whose numbers had been exaggerated for propaganda purposes.

When Bush comes back to DC, the items on the agenda are going to be Social Security, on which he is on the defensive; stem cells, on which he is on the defensive; gas prices, which he can do nothing about now; taxes, on which the Dems, if they care to, could portray him as caring only about the have mores, and Roberts, on which the Dems, again, have an opportunity to draw contrasts. Sounds like fun.

After some serious thought, I agree that the Dems should keep up criticism of the war and staple Bush to that debacle, but (from all sides) be tolerant of diversity of opinion within the party. I think Jerome Armstrong is probably right that calling for immmediate (as opposed to phased over 2 years) withdrawal and politicizing the war as a catfight between Republicans and Democrats is a bad idea that will damage the Dems in the long run.

But I also have felt for the past year that a large part of the Dems' wimp image is their inability to stand up quickly and forcefully to bullying attacks. If you can't defend yourself and your positions, how can you convincingly defend the country? So that Dems are concentrating their fire where it belongs, it behooves Dems not to bully each other at this point. Let each faction pursue its strategy against the Republicans and lets see where we are in 3-6 months.

[Sara]

And don't forget the impact of some prabable indictments within the next six weeks of so -- Plame/Rove for one, and perhaps more on DeLay. Laura Rozen pointed to something interesting the other day -- apparently the DeLay/Abramoff deal also involves something about illegal Russian Arms Dealers. What we don't know would make a shopper of a good espionage novel.

By the way -- Obviously I have not seen the movie -- it opens this weekend, but is getting lots of advertising. But John LeCarre's novel " The Constant Gardner" is absolutely perfectly timed. Set in Kenya, it deals with arms dealers, fraud by international Pharm Corp's, and much skullduggery by overage former intelligence operatives of all nationalities, all hep to taking over the world. Even has al-Qaeda in it -- and the novel was what I was reading on 911. Fiction -- but I think it should be a great movie.

[Mimikatz]

This quote, from the Christial Science monitor, via Froomkin, is priceless:

Linda Feldmann writes in the Christian Science Monitor: "President Bush faces a monumental task: He must project hope about prospects for building a stable and democratic Iraq, analysts say, while at the same time appearing connected to reality, as US casualties mount in both Iraq and Afghanistan."

[DemFromCT]

He can't do it. But as of tonight, it's still necessary for a politician to come out against the war before there's a decent national anti-war movement. So says Gary Hart on ABC's World News Tonight. This assumes politicians lead rather than follow, a rare occurrance IMHO.

So we still get to watch Bush sink. But most likely it'll take a bit longer, as others have said, before we're we need to be.

OTOH, the idea that Bush can handpick military families and 'prove' anything is a lost cause. Won't work... no one really trusts him anymore.

[DemFromCT]

from froomkin:

Et Tu, O'Reilly? (it has a certain ring to it -ed) Here's Bill O'Reilly last night on Fox News: "President Bush could go down in history as another Ronald Reagan -- or another Warren Harding. We'll know over the next few months. As you may know, the president's job approval rating is dropping into dangerous territory, the low 40's. If he falls much farther, his power to get things done falls as well. Three things are bedeviling Mr. Bush -- chaos in Iraq, chaos on the southern border, and high gas prices. The president either deals effectively with those issues or risks going down in history as a failure. And that is the no-spin truth."

[kaleidescope]

Doesn't Nancy Pelosi count as a politician out against the war? She's the House Majority Leader even if she is a woman.

[kaleidescope]

Sorry, I meant Minority Leader.

[DemFromCT]

She does count. We need someone running for president besides hagel.

[David G.]

Russ Feingold is out against it, has called for a withdrawal by the end of 2006. And he's looking to run for President.

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