An Unhappy Union
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, January 27, 2006; 2:21 PM
President Bush will have two major audiences when he delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday night, and one of them is a lot more disappointed in him than the other.
But for a few anemic signs of independence, the Republican-controlled Congress seems happy following his lead. Not so the American public.
A slew of polls are out today telling the story of a people who are decidedly dour about Bush's performance at almost every level. One suddenly mounting area of concern: ethics. His last source of strength: national security. But even that is something of a mixed bag.
Widespread Discontent
Ronald Brownstein writes in the Los Angeles Times that Bush "faces widespread discontent over his job performance and the nation's direction that could threaten his party in the 2006 election, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found."
Bush's approval rating came in at 43 percent, his weakest showing ever in that particular poll.
Brownstein writes: "He received even lower marks for his handling of the economy, healthcare and Iraq -- especially from women, who the poll found had turned against him on several fronts. And by a 2-1 ratio, those surveyed said the nation needed to change direction from the overall course Bush had set.
"But most of those surveyed believed Bush's policies had made the nation more secure. And a plurality say they trusted him more than they did Democrats to protect the country against terrorism -- advantages that could help Republicans defend their House and Senate majorities in November."
You can see some results here.
Fox News finds Bush's approval at 41 percent.
Wording Matters
Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder write in the New York Times: "Americans are willing to tolerate eavesdropping without warrants to fight terrorism, but are concerned that the aggressive antiterrorism programs championed by the Bush administration are encroaching on civil liberties, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
"In a sign that public opinion about the trade-offs between national security and individual rights is nuanced and remains highly unresolved, responses to questions about the administration's eavesdropping program varied significantly depending on how the questions were worded, underlining the importance of the effort by the White House this week to define the issue on its terms. . . .
"The results suggest that Americans' view of the program depends in large part on whether they perceive it as a bulwark in the fight against terrorism, as Mr. Bush has sought to cast it, or as an unnecessary and unwarranted infringement on civil liberties, as critics have said."
The Times poll finds Bush's job approval at 42 percent, up 1 point from early December, "a lackluster rating that could hamper his ability to rally public opinion behind his agenda and push legislation through a divided Congress. Beyond that, nearly two-thirds of the country thinks the nation is on the wrong track, a level that has historically proved to be a matter of concern for a party in power."
Here are a graphic and the complete poll results .
You can track some of the wording used in various eavesdropping-related questions in the past several weeks on PollingReport.com .
The Times acknowledges the importance of how its questions are framed. In short, if you pit civil liberties against fighting terrorism in the public's mind, terrorism generally wins.
But that's not actually the central drama here.
Yet, as far as I know, none of these polls ask whether the public thinks Bush was wrong to embark on this program purely on his own executive authority, rather than asking Congress or the courts for their approval.
Critics of the program are not questioning the underlying intent -- to eavesdrop on the communication of suspected terrorists -- they're challenging Bush's unilateral authority to do so, without judicial or congressional approval. There's also a concern that, because of the lack of checks and balances, the program may be straying more widely than has been publicly acknowledged.
If you pit the Constitution against fighting terrorism, who wins?
Ethics
Richard Morin writes for washingtonpost.com this morning: "A strong bipartisan majority of the public believes President Bush should release records of meetings between disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and White House staffers despite administration claims that media requests for details about those contacts amount to a 'fishing expedition,' according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
"The survey found that three in four--76 percent--of all Americans said Bush should disclose contacts between aides and Abramoff while 18 percent disagreed. Two in three Republicans joined with eight in 10 Democrats and political independents in favoring disclosure, according to the poll. . . .
"The new poll found that 56 percent of the public disapproved of the way that Bush is handling ethics in government, up seven percentage points in the past five weeks."
Executive Power
Jim VandeHei writes in The Washington Post: "President Bush set limits yesterday on White House cooperation in three political disputes, saying he is determined to assert presidential prerogatives on such matters as domestic eavesdropping and congressional inquiries into Hurricane Katrina.
"In a mid-morning news conference, Bush told reporters he is skeptical of a proposed law imposing new oversights on his use of the National Security Agency to listen in on electronic communications. He also said that he will block White House aides from testifying about the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina, and that he will not release official White House photos of himself with former Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff."
Bush made it sound like his pictures with Abramoff were purely from assembly-line style receiving lines. But that's not necessarily so. Some of the pictures appear to have been taken at the more intimate sort of events typically reserved to reward political allies.
VandeHei writes that Bush was also "adamant about not allowing top aides to testify about Hurricane Katrina. Bush, who has moved on several fronts over the past five years to strengthen the power of the presidency, said it would be damaging to him and future presidents if aides feared providing candid advice."
But what kind of advice Bush got is not the central point -- it's what kind of information he got, and what did he do with it? Isn't that fair game?
Other Abramoff News
Philip Shenon and Elisabeth Bumiller write in the New York Times: "The investigation of Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Republican lobbyist, took a surprising new turn on Thursday when the Justice Department said the chief prosecutor in the inquiry would step down next week because he had been nominated to a federal judgeship by President Bush. . . .
"The administration said that the appointment was routine and that it would not affect the investigation, but Democrats swiftly questioned the timing of the move and called for a special prosecutor."
Scrubbing Photos?
Blogger Josh Marshall exposes the scrubbing of Abramoff photos at the Web site of Reflections Photography, a studio that does photo shoots for many Republican political events.
Wiretap Fact Check
In today's Washington Post, Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus go into some detail about "several elements in the NSA spying debate that have been clouded by apparent contradictions and mixed messages from the government since the program was revealed last month. . . .
"Many Democratic lawmakers and legal experts have seized on these and other issues in recent days to argue that the Bush administration has been misleading in its explanations of the NSA program."
For example: "Bush and his top aides have repeatedly stressed that 'Congress' had been briefed on the program over the past four years, but have often neglected to mention that the briefings were limited to the 'Gang of Eight': the speaker and minority leader of the House; the majority and minority leaders of the Senate; and the chairmen and ranking Democrats on the two intelligence committees. And they were barred from taking notes or discussing what they heard with other lawmakers or their staffs. . . .
"Yet Dan Bartlett, counselor to Bush and White House communications director, said Monday that the lawmakers who had been briefed 'believed we are doing the right thing' and that Democratic leaders 'briefed on these programs would be screaming from the mountaintops' if they thought the program was illegally eavesdropping on Americans."
Whopper Watch
James Gordon Meek writes in the New York Daily News: "In speech after speech, President Bush claims that if the National Security Agency could have wiretapped two Al Qaeda operatives living in San Diego, the 9/11 attacks might have been thwarted.
"That's a whopper, critics say.
"'We didn't realize they were here plotting the attack until it was too late,' Bush said Wednesday at NSA headquarters.
" 'It's not true,' ex-9/11 commissioner Bob Kerrey, president of the New School in Manhattan, told the Daily News. 'We knew about those two guys - the CIA lost them.' . . .
" 'The problem was the CIA and FBI not communicating and not picking them up,' said Thomas Kean, the commission's former chairman." |
