Cognitive Dissonance and the Polls

[Annie]

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/68170.htm

DUBYA'S DILEMMA

By JOHN PODHORETZ

May 9, 2006 -- THE great national experiment in cognitive dissonance continues.

It's been only a week since the revelation that economic growth in the first quarter of this year was nearly 5 percent - and about a week since reports of a significant jump in personal incomes.

It was only yesterday that crude-oil prices fell below $69 a barrel - a 10 percent drop in two weeks. Also yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office announced that revenues to the federal government are 10 percent higher than expected because of the economic boom.

All in all, there seems to be good reason for the stock market to be riding a bullish wave that may carry the Dow Jones Industrial Average over 12,000 and to a new all-time high in the coming week.

So why on earth does the Gallup Organization's new poll show President Bush at 31 percent, with 65 percent of Americans disapproving of his performance?

I would wager that even the most rabid Democratic partisans are, in the privacy of their own offices, scratching their heads a bit over the continuing decline in the president's popularity. This kind of political meltdown should be tracking with a general meltdown either in the economy or on matters of national security, when in fact things appear to be improving all over the place.

Of course we all know the putative reasons. Like:

We aren't winning in Iraq. But in fact, the situation in Iraq has taken a distinct turn for the better, both politically and on the ground, as even harsh Bush critic Barry McCaffrey - a retired general and former Clinton White House official - reports. It may be that the public doesn't know, understand or care all that much about incremental progress, but whatever is happening in Iraq, things certainly aren't getting worse.

Americans are more nervous about the future. That may be true, but if the data show people are indeed better off than they were a few years ago, it's odd for them to be demonstrating such discontent with current leadership. Any president at any time in our history, Democrat or Republican, would have been thrilled to preside over an economy that has behaved the way this one has behaved for the past three years - steady growth, low inflation, sustained job creation, declining unemployment.

Americans are disgusted by Washington. It appears they are - given the low standing of the president, both political parties and both houses of Congress. And they have reason to be dissatisfied, given the growth of pork and the corrupt behavior of various members of Congress. But again, they're expressing an intensity of disgust that doesn't quite correlate with the facts on the ground in D.C.

The anti-Bush sentiment appears to have two sources. First, everyone who doesn't actively like the president now actively dislikes him. This was true of partisan Democrats in 2004, but now it appears true as well of independents.

Second, the president is losing support from conservatives and Republicans. There are all sorts of theories about why this is true, like how they don't like his spending plans and don't like his immigration policies. Fine, but he had the same immigration plan in 2004 and spent like a sailor in his first term and still had over 90 percent support during that election year.

So here's a theory: Republicans and conservatives have grown weary of defending Bush. They've been fighting and fighting and fighting for years, and they see no letup in the hostility toward him or in the energy and determination of his critics. Faced with that implacable opposition, they've grown not disaffected but disheartened.

They thought they were on a winning team. Now they're not so sure, and they're feeling let down, the way passionate sports fans do when their guys stumble and fall in the second half of the season. In this case, though, the economic data and other markers of progress suggest that the second half isn't actually going badly at all.

It's a strange moment. Either something new is happening in American politics that is going to rewrite existing rules, or the polls are measuring something that won't have much of a long-term impact.

We're not going to know the answer until the November elections.

 

[Diuretic]

It's a strange moment. Either something new is happening in American politics that is going to rewrite existing rules, or the polls are measuring something that won't have much of a long-term impact.

To quote a great philosopher...."Doh!"

 

[rtwngAvngr]

It's because he tried to sell port operations to a terrorist nation and because he called the minuteman vigilantes and refuses to enforce the border, but of course, these gaffs are part of the neocon agenda, so podhoretz is ignoring them and acting stymied. Who has dissonance, anyone who believes podhoretz's bullshit.