Yet Bush had the highest ever approval ratings just after Sep 11th 2001, and was elected into office twice. Just goes to show how useful opinion polls are at predicting the quality of a politician. Voters en masse basically have no f*cking clue.
It's also amusing to see the poll numbers on the Iraq war. Back in 2003 when many people including myself were predicting it was an ill-advised, excessively risky operation based on flawed evidence and assumptions, the public were massively in favour of it. Now they are majority against the war - yet ironically, in the last year the US has actually done a very good job containing the insurgency. Since the appointment of Petraeus the insurgents have basically got their collective arses kicked - even war sceptics like myself can see that the US has improved its performance a lot since the disastrous Rumsfeld era. Yet Joe Schmoe on Main Street thinks the war is going worse than ever - go figure.
There are only really two conclusions I can draw from this. One - George Bush has been a pretty bad president. Two - the voting public, as a group, are incredibly f*cking stupid and ill-informed.
They say every democracy gets the government it deserves. In the case of Bush and the US voting public from 2000-2008, I would have to agree. A stupid electorate votes in a stupid president, then re-elects him. They deserved to get the appalling performance that they received from this mediocre politician.
I feel sorry for the smart Americans who had to put up with this nonsense for 8 whole years.
It's also amusing to see the poll numbers on the Iraq war. Back in 2003 when many people including myself were predicting it was an ill-advised, excessively risky operation based on flawed evidence and assumptions, the public were massively in favour of it. Now they are majority against the war - yet ironically, in the last year the US has actually done a very good job containing the insurgency. Since the appointment of Petraeus the insurgents have basically got their collective arses kicked - even war sceptics like myself can see that the US has improved its performance a lot since the disastrous Rumsfeld era. Yet Joe Schmoe on Main Street thinks the war is going worse than ever - go figure.
There are only really two conclusions I can draw from this. One - George Bush has been a pretty bad president. Two - the voting public, as a group, are incredibly f*cking stupid and ill-informed.
They say every democracy gets the government it deserves. In the case of Bush and the US voting public from 2000-2008, I would have to agree. A stupid electorate votes in a stupid president, then re-elects him. They deserved to get the appalling performance that they received from this mediocre politician.
I feel sorry for the smart Americans who had to put up with this nonsense for 8 whole years.
