Chris Bowers at MyDD has some analysis of Bush’s latest poll numbers. Gallup has Bush’s disapproval rating of 63% — which is the same as Nixon’s disapproval rating at the height of Watergate (July 15, 1974.) Though I believe Bush’s approval rating of 34% is a bit higher than Nixon’s was. The gap between approval and disapproval (-29%) is within spitting distance of the all time worst held by Carter and Bush Sr (-31%).
Just, for what it’s worth, I’d happily replace George W. with Bush Sr., Carter, or Nixon. Incompetence *and* bad policy is a toxic brew. Dubya’s predecessors mostly seemed to suffer from one or the other but not both.
At least we didn’t elect that one guy that yelled that time.
Another note–when does he start being treated like he’s unpopular? I mean, radio still defers to him. The TV pundits still think he’s cute, funny, and likeable. When do they suddenly say “Get away from me, you illiterate spaz”?
Carter simply got trashed in the media. Remember the non-story of the killer rabbit hoopla. Now you know how long the Washington press corp has had its taste for Gore saying he invented the internet crap.
Carter made the mistake of not moving to invalidate automatic cost of living adjustments in the wake of the 1970 oil price shocks. Doing so would have made the inflationary effects of the rise in oil price more evenly felt by Americans and prevented one segment of the economy attempting to pass the burden onto the other making the matter far worse. But Carter was afraid of a decisive FDR style intervention in the economy that would have made the economic burden felt more evenly across the population. While Carter never actually used the term malaise in a speech, the “crisis of confidence” phrase was deadly. Who else but that disaster for Liberals everywhere MSNBC’s own Chris Matthew thought that one up. The correct response to the energy crisis would have been to straight out tell American that whatever hardships rising energy price placed on American the burden was to be shared equally as possible and that American was going to work towards a brighter tomorrow of energy independence. Instead of the malaise speech it would have been know as the “What we have here folks is a shit sandwich folks and we are all going to have to take a bite” speech. Instead he let Paul Volker at the Fed bring the economy to its knees with high interest rates.
Carter suffered from the fall on the Shah of Iran, but he never made the disasterous decision of restoring the Shah to the Throne that Eisenhower made. Folks make a big deal about the failed Iranian hostage rescue attempt, but Carter felt he had to try something. It simply did not work, I do not see the point for blaming Carter for a military that he was only beginning to turn around after the fiasco of the Vietnam years.
Carter took a huge hit for canceling the B-1 bomber, but even after Reagan restored the financing the plane proved to be unnecessary and had a limited deployment life. But he was absolutely right about the A-10 and F-16.
The fall of the Shah however led directly to the Russian worries about the rise of Islamic Fundementalism and the invasion of Afghanistan.
Boycotting the Moscow Olympics was the right decision as was stopping the shipment of Russian grain. Carter was the first to begin arming the Afghan rebels.
Carter did have many successes including Camp David and the Panama Canal deal for instance inspite of what the wing-nuts said. He started the change in policy with South Africa.
Carter was not a bad president, he simply lacked the always optimistic public face that Americans expected their mass media era Presidents to have, like FDR, Clinton and Reagan.
And of course we should have listened to Carter on energy policy
Carter was a ‘born again Christian’and here he was president! In late 70s a born again Christian was seen as someone who sang hymns on river banks during total immersion baptisms. At the time he was considered quaint for a national figure and we thought all born again Christians were maybe a little on the liberal side, and populist,like Carter.But he’s become quite a venerable stateman, now that he’s been in private life all these years.
The thing about shit sandwiches is, the more bread you have, the better they taste.
And, just a plate o’ shrimp moment with respect to Eisenhower and the Shah — I was reading a bit of “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power” and it sounds like, purely from a strategic view, Iran’s Mohammed Mossadegh had to be gotten rid of, otherwise there was a good chance he would have turned Iran’s oil fields over to the Soviets.
Whether our strategic needs justify the actions or whether there were options other than the Shah, I don’t really know.
Daniel Yergin is seen by many as an apologist for the Great Powers and the major oil companies in their pursuit to exploit the world’s oil resorces and subjucate brown peoples. So I am not surprise he would have justified over throwing the Shah of Iran using Dulles’ cold war rationals.
What did Russia need with Iran’s oil? They had all they wanted at the time. Remember a little battle called Staligrad, well it was really just a stop over for the prize which was the oil fields of Baku. In fact in 1942, the Nazis presented Hitler with a birthday cake with the map of the Russian Caucuses as the icing.
Taking Stalingrad (now Volgagrad) wouldn’t have delivered the Armenian and Caspian Sea oilfields to the Germans in WWII. The German advance on Armenia had bogged down and Hitler, as ever totally lacking patience, moved his attention to a different subject. Throwing the German Sixth Army toward Stalingrad diverted forces that would better (from the German point of view) have been used elsewhere. It also produced a salient in the German lines which Marshall Zhukov could attack at its base and thereby cutoff the German Army from retreat.
While Stalingrad gets the attention, I suggest Kursk as the real turning point in the German/Soviet war of 1941-1945. Kursk was the first time the Red Army actually showed it could outfight the Wehrmacht and out think most of its generals (excluding von Mannstein).
Kursk may have been where the Russians showed they could fight as effectively, but basically momentum was shifted that first winter when the German offensive was halted. Russia could trade twenty dead for each German dead, and were willing to do that. They also had established their production in the east, far from harm. By the time of Kursk, the Russians were a professional, effective fighting force. But they need not have been, and they still would have won. Free advice to budding conquerers out there: Do not try to conquer Russia. Just get it out of your minds.
I would agree that the first inkling that the German Army had limitations was shown during the first winter when its offensive on Moscow was halted. But the army Zhukov brought west to achieve that victory was as good as any in the Soviet Army at the start of the war, having learned its trade in a winning fight against the Japanese a few years earlier. I suspect too that the eastern army had not suffered from Stalin’s purges as much as the western forces nor had it endured the humiliation of the Finland invasion.
I am not sure I agree that the Russians would have won the war without developing an effective, professional fighting force. I think the war could have stagnated, and the Germans would have ended up with some gains to sections of the west. In defense of your view though is the fact that Hitler, informed by early 20th century geopolitical views that control of central Asia was essential to world domination, combined with his irrationality, would have led him to continue ordering attacks each summer until German manpower was utterly exhausted. Plus, Nazi ideology prevented the Germans from mobilizing Soviet peoples against Stalin. More Ukrainians might gladly have joined the Germans but for the fact that the SS was out to exterminate them. Many non-Russians were ripe for revolt until they learned the hard way that there was no good choice between the monster in Moscow and the one in Berlin.
Something I find interesting about this period and which echos to our own day relates to the attempts of the Nazis to recruit Muslims in the Soviet Union to their cause. Some of the surviving recruits appear to have had connections to political movements in Arab lands after the war including the Iraqi Bathist Party.