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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: redfish who wrote (37615)	7/25/2004 8:20:25 PM
From: zonkie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

What do junior and Lyndon Johnson have in common? One thing they don't have in common was that Lyndon saw (read) the writing on the wall. ________________________ What's the Presidential Tipping Point? By MICHAEL ORESKES Published: July 25, 2004 N presidential elections much is made of the power of incumbency. Who but the president can order up an aircraft carrier for a speaker's platform? But there are perils, too, as George W. Bush is finding. Because when you are the incumbent the election is, fundamentally, about you. On this summer weekend, jammed between the harsh report of the 9/11 commission and the nomination of John Kerry at the Democratic convention, Mr. Bush finds himself in the same difficult place as Harry S. Truman in 1948 and Jimmy Carter in 1980: an incumbent facing a dubious electorate that could tip either way. "At some point, politicians can step over an amorphous line that separates good or questionable judgment from inexcusably arrogant, outrageous or incompetent behavior," said Professor Jeffery A. Smith, an historian at the University of Wisconsin and the author of "American Presidential Elections: Trust and the Rational Voter." "That shatters trust. Democracy is built on perceptions of trustworthiness. We bond with politicians who tell us they like us and are like us, but their images and stories can be built up and torn down by what they actually do. If they disappoint, they may be discarded if the alternatives don't look worse." Confidence and trust are fragile things in any relationship, no less between a president and voters. Voters still rate Mr. Bush fairly well on the big question of fighting terrorism. But support for the war in Iraq has been sliding, particularly since the killings of American security guards who were burned and hung from a bridge for the world to see. When Mr. Bush launched the war last year, three-quarters of the country approved. This month, in the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll, nearly 6 of 10 potential voters disapproved. A president's overall standing generally holds up longer than support on any specific issue or attribute. Support for the Vietnam War declined for several years before Lyndon B. Johnson's overall support began eroding. The 1968 election was already under way before Johnson realized the depth of his problems and withdrew from the race for re-election. For Mr. Bush, the country is about evenly divided on approval of his presidency, according to the latest poll. But there are some ominous signs that Mr. Bush is beginning to suffer from a Johnson-style "credibility gap" after sending the country to war to root out weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda, and being unable to prove either one. When asked by The New York Times and CBS News in June whether Mr. Bush was being completely honest about the war in Iraq, 20 percent of voters said he was mostly lying and 59 percent said he was hiding something. Only 18 percent thought he was telling the entire truth. The question for Mr. Bush is how damaged is his bond with the voters? Has he tipped into a negative zone from which he cannot recover? Or can he win a second term? "The bond can break, and in Bush's case the bond has broken for some previous supporters," said Thomas E. Patterson, a professor of government and the press at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "However, presidential support is based on multiple influences - including partisanship. It took a long time, for example, for certain groups of Americans to conclude in 1973-74 that Nixon had to go. Bush will have a lot of trouble regaining those that have become deeply dissatisfied with his leadership. But I don't have a sense yet that he's lost so many early backers that he's a goner." The race is not so much too close to call, as too soon to call. Of the 52 presidential elections since the first in 1796, slightly more than half have involved incumbent presidents, a special dynamic. When an incumbent seeks another term, voters make a threshold calculation, students of elections say. "The basic issue is, does the president have the confidence of the voters on the big questions," said Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, who has been polling about presidents for a generation. Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1996 passed this referendum. The voters judged that they were trustworthy to deliver the proverbial peace and prosperity. Their opponents, Walter S. Mondale and Robert Dole, never got a serious look. But when voters have enough doubts about a sitting president they begin to consider the alternative. That is not where an incumbent wants to be "with little over 100 days until an historic election," as Mr. Bush himself described the ticking clock last week. more... you might have sign up... which I did with all false answers nytimes.com

To: redfish who wrote (37615)	7/25/2004 9:54:42 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

1) effete (2) values tolerance above all else (3) unwilling to defend self (4) loves PETA (5) can't wait to surrender to criminals and terrorists That's a reasonable caricature of liberals, though not all Democrats are liberals. Though I'm not sure the caricature doesn't have a basis in reality. I've known some liberal people and I have heard things come out of their mouths that fit the caricatures. Here's an example from Mr. Kerry - from a campaign appearance in Columbus OH: Talking about education yesterday, Mr. Kerry also told the largely black crowd at the day care center that there are more blacks in prison than in college. "That's unacceptable," he said. "But it's not their fault." Rather than the inmates, the former Boston prosecutor blamed poverty, poor schools, a dearth of after-school programs and "all of us as adults not doing what we need to do."