Presidential Capital -- 3/1/06
Still a kind of slow news period, but it's worth taking time to think about the impact on Bush of the many bits of bad news, self inflicted and otherwise, that have come his way in the last six months or so.
Last night in a TV news interview, President Bush said he wasn’t concerned about his low ratings in recent polls, and insisted that he still has plenty of political capital to get things done. Having hit an approval rating of 34% in a CBS poll released a couple days ago, however, he is sounding new depths and, wishful thinking aside, he does not have the clout even with congressional Republicans that he did when his fortunes were rosier.
In Chapter 8 we explain that a president’s ability to get things done legislatively depends to a large extent on his ability to persuade Congress to go along with him, which in turn depends on his popularity with the public. The furor over the Dubai deal, which appears to be in increasing trouble, despite the company itself having asked for an investigation of security concerns (Carl Hulse, New Concerns on Port Deal are Raised in Congress, NYT, 3/1/06), shows that even Republicans loyal to Bush are deserting him over this.
There are some excellent analyses of Bush’s approval ratings and of polls on the Dubai port deal at mysterypollster.com (specifically, here and here). You can find good analysis of how the administration came to drop the ball so badly on this issue at Sheryl Gay Stolberg, How a Deal Became a Liability for the GOP (NYT, 2/26/06); and on the implications of that, along with events from Katrina to the Cheney hunting incident, on his ability to get things done in his second term at Tom Raum, Bush Beset by Political Miscues (WaPo, 2/27/06).