As President Bush prepares for tomorrow’s State of the Union address, it’s fairly obvious he will be doing so from a position of incredible weakness:
President Bush plans to reach out to the opposition in his State of the Union address tonight with new and recycled proposals on health care, energy, immigration and education, but the uproar over his decision to send more U.S. troops to Iraq has eclipsed potential consensus on domestic policy.
As he addresses a Congress controlled entirely by Democrats for the first time since he took office, Bush faces deep skepticism inside the chamber, even within the House Republican leadership, which yesterday made proposals intended “to hold the Bush administration . . . accountable” for the progress of his latest Iraq plan.
The doubt on Capitol Hill reflects the continuing erosion of Bush’s public support across the country. His approval rating is at the lowest level of his presidency, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, and only twice in the past six decades has a president delivered his annual speech to the nation in a weaker condition in the polls — Harry S. Truman in the midst of the Korean War in 1952 and Richard M. Nixon in the throes of Watergate in 1974.
For the first time, majorities of Americans say Bush cannot be trusted in a crisis, has not made the country safer and should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq to avoid further casualties rather than leave them until civil order is restored. And, in a sign of intensifying opposition, a majority — 51 percent — for the first time expressed strong disapproval of Bush’s performance, compared with 17 percent who strongly approved.
What that means should be fairly obvious to all but the blindest Bush supporter. It really doesn’t matter what the President says tomorrow. His administration is, for all purposes, over. The public is so effectively soured against him that it would take a miracle the likes of which American politics has never seen for him to stage a comeback of any kind.
Quite honestly, this, along with the absurd pagentry of the State of the Union itself, is one reason I may just be watching something on TiVo tomorrow at 9pm Eastern.
