25 September 2004
Why Isn't Bush Getting a Landslide?
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Republicans have been crowing about how well George W. Bush is doing in voter polls, but even if you ignore the question of bias in certain polls... no, he really isn't doing all that well. Certainly not as well as he should be.
Think about it: We're in the middle of a war, and there's am understandable reluctance to change leaders in the middle of one. He scores high on the "likeability" scale, with lots of people saying they'd like to sit down at a bar or backyard barbeque with him. He exudes confidence and certainty, which people also find appealing, especially in times of crisis. But he's way behind his peers. Look at the last few war-time presidents and see how well they did in their re-election bids:
- Richard Nixon (1972, Vietnam) 60% popular vote, 520 electoral votes
- Lyndon Johnson (1964, Vietnam) 61% popular vote, 486 electoral votes
- Dwight Eisenhower (1952, Korea) 55% popular vote, 442 electoral votes
- Franklin Roosevelt (1944, WW2) 53% popular vote, 432 electoral votes
By contrast, the highest Bush has gotten in the electoral-college projections I've been following has been 331 electoral votes, he spent much of the summer in the low 200's, and as of today he's at only 311. Sure, that's more than he got last time, but if he's supposed to be the Commander in Chief that Americans either trust or are afraid to replace during war time... why is he still fighting to get above 50% in the popularity polls, and scrapping over half a dozen medium-large electoral states?
I'd like to think that it's because Americans don't really trust him, and see his illegal invasion of Iraq and the mess it's created as evidence of his duplicity and/or incompetence. But I think Clinton's 1992 campaign manager probably got a better handle on it: "It's the economy, stupid." I don't believe it makes much sense to give the president blame/credit for what happens to the economy during his tenure, but that's how people vote. It's why Michigan has been pretty safely in the Kerry column all summer: we're losing jobs here... lots of them. Other parts of the country don't have it as bad, but it isn't exactly "morning in America" anywhere else either. To compare GWB's score on the job-making tally with that of the past ten presidents, see this graph, which puts him dead last, behind his father and Jerry Ford. Despite its other ills, war is supposed to be good for the economy, but apparently not the way GWB fights it.
He might squeak by with a more decisive margin in the electoral vote and a slim popular majority, but that's not a victory or a mandate; for a war-time president, it's a slap in the face.
# 2004-09-25 02:51 PM | TrackBackThis is a horribly abbreviated version of my last two attempts to post a comment here that claimed I was using a "spam" word ... totally absurd.
Please, for the sake of respectable reporting, get rid of the graph. That graph is a prime example of the "yellow journalism" that has lost the last for elections, because of it's blatantly stupid flaws. The left side claims "Thousands of Jobs" not "PERCENTAGE of jobs" and for whatever unknown ignorant reason has EVERY President starting off with 100,000 jobs. This makes everything in the article look foolish. Think about it. If GHWB left office with 102,500 jobs, then that would be WJC's starting level ... not 100,000. As would WJC's ending numbers of nearly 121,000 would be GWB's starting numbers. This would greatly enhance the point that he started with nearly 121,000 and only has 99,500 now. There is much much more to this that would have made your article worthy of acclaim, but since it keeps throwing me out claiming I am attempting spam, I will let those who lose out on those points simply lose out.
You're right: the graph is incorrectly labeled. But if you're going to ask a rhetorical question like "Why start them all at 100?", you should pause for a moment to try to figure that out, because the answer explains the graph pretty well, and makes your arguments about its nonsensicality look pretty foolish yourself. I guess you did pause, because you seem to have caught onto the possibility that it might be percentages... but then barreled ahead with your blind faith in a text label.
I didn't notice the incorrect label, because it was obvious (to me) at a glance that it was a graph of job levels as a percentage of the level at each president's inauguration. By starting each president at "100" it normalised that data to show their records relative to each other over the course of their respective administrations. Which not only makes the data quite meaningful and easy to read, but also explains the answers to the questions you tried so little to figure out yourself.
I'm sorry if you were hitting a false positive on the spam filter (I get a ton machine-posted crap submitted here), and I understand that makes a person irritable, so that excuses the snotty tone and whiny accusations. But it's no excuse for being so quick to complain and slow to think even before you hit the spam filter. For example, you seem to be blaming me for the labeling mistake, when it's obvious that I didn't create the graph. Furthermore, the link to the graph was merely an aside, so your hysterical claim that it completely undermines the whole article is pretty ridiculous. The one looking foolish here is you, Phil.
Posted by: God's ex-Boyfriend at October 11, 2004 07:13 PM
