Bush’s final approval rating when he left office at 22 per cent
- By CBS News (article excerpts)
(CBS) President Bush will leave office as one of the most unpopular departing presidents in history, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll showing Mr. Bush’s final approval rating at 22 percent.
Seventy-three percent say they disapprove of the way Mr. Bush has handled his job as president over the last eight years.
Vice President Dick Cheney also leaves office amid negative perceptions, as his approval rating stands at just 13 percent.
Note how Dick Cheney’s “approval” rating was markedly lower; barely at the level of double digits. These two men clearly delivered federal governance at a level befitting the state of the economy when they left office.
Approval ratings that will follow Bush/Cheney throughout U.S.History cannot and will not be resurrected through penning books and waltzing around with interviews on sympathetic or perceived neutral television media. Yet, both Bush and Cheney have published books; in the case of the latter, a book that might breed controversy. Controversy that will not help Cheney’s reputation as a practitioner of American conservatism…nor his legacy.
- I remind you that Cheney has the following ‘collars’ that we cannot shed.
- a) the “outting” of Valerie Plame
- b) being instrumental in the authorization of U.S. sanctioned torture
- c) “deficits don’t matter“
- d) advocated a military option against Iran’s nuclear program (Another war on top of Afghanistan and Iraq?)
Dick Cheney has surfaced to tout his book. While I have no intention of even touching the book, I am not surprised that key Cabinet members of the Bush Cabinet have very different recollections of Cheney’s cheap shot accounts.
After resigning as CIA Head, George Tenet extensively commented about Bush and Cheney’s malfeasance on matters involving his agency. Mind you “his agency” was the Central Intelligence Agency; there are few legal bounds associated with international intelligence operations.
Cheney specifically wrote about the “force” employed toward both Colin Powell and Condi Rice, resulting, respectively, in the resignation of the first and tears of the second.
Powell refutes Cheney’s allegations and the Bush/Cheney charge to war in an interview with CNN Producer Gabriella Schwarz:
At the time, Powell said he told the president, “If you break it, you own it,” in reference to the invasion. That was advice he said Cheney “may forget.”
“You have got to understand that if we have to go to war in Iraq, we have to be prepared for the whole war, not just the first phase,” Powell said. ”And Mr. Cheney and many of his colleagues did not prepare for what happened after the fall of Baghdad.”
Forty-five hundred U.S Troops dead, 30,000 plus maimed or disabled for life, 100,000 plus Iraqis dead, trillions wasted (much of the Bush deficit) and we are supposed to consider Cheney a credible person?
Rice refutes Cheney’s written word in an interview with Reuters.
Rice, in a telephone interview, also disputed a passage in Cheney’s memoir, “In My Time,” in which he says the Secretary of State “tearfully admitted” that the Bush administration should not have apologized for a claim in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address on Iraq’s supposed search for uranium for nuclear arms.
Cheney, who opposed a public apology for the unfounded claim, wrote that Rice “came into my office, sat down in the chair next to my desk, and tearfully admitted I had been right.”
“It certainly doesn’t sound like me, now, does it?” Rice said in the interview. “I would never — I don’t remember coming to the Vice President tearfully about anything in the entire eight years that I knew him.”
“I did say to him that he had been right about the press reaction,” to the administration’s acknowledgment that the remarks about Iraq seeking uranium in Africa should not have been in Bush’s speech, Rice said.
Are we to sit idly and accept Cheney’s written words without questions?
Colin Powell is a decorated military leader and a natural leader. He served in Viet Nam (multiple tours) and attained the highest of military ranks within 35 years of Truman desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces. He is a trusted American hero without question.
Wiki...
Colin Luther Powell (pronounced /ˈkoʊlɨn/; born April 5, 1937) is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army.[1] He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African American to serve in that position.[2][3][4][5] During his military career, Powell also served as National Security Advisor (1987–1989), as Commander of the U.S. Army Forces Command (1989) and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–1993), holding the latter position during the Gulf War. He was the first, and so far the only, African American to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Former Secretary of State Rice is a learned academic conservative who has never exercised any behavior that was below that of superior serve to the nation. She has met and negotiated with leaders of nations in which women are not allowed individual freedoms. She has met with despots she has provided council to a former President, and she has played the piano for the Queen of England (if that excites you, it does not me but still factual).
Did Dick Cheney accomplish any foreign service while Vice President beyond a few trips to Afghanistan or Iraq, and of course, being dispatched to the country of Georgia during the 2008 Republican Convention?
I suggest that Powell and Rice are examples of courageous Americans who did their best for America while surrounded with incompetent agenda-driven politicians; Cheney was the epitome of the “driven.” If either has a fault or something for which to lower their heads it would be their decision to join the Bush Administration and serve next to the likes of Dick Cheney. I have recently written of Mr. Cheney and his service the nation. If you visited the previous link, did you notice any references to acts of heroism or courage in service to the nation? I could make a case that for us veterans who served the nation during the Viet Nam War, Cheney’s five draft deferments are noteworthy.
I understand that our nation is being taken to the depths of some sort of Right-wing abyss. I do not understand how a person who left office after eight years with an approval rating of 13 per cent could garner serious attention for U.S. media (television in particular). Of course MSNBC commentators also want to have Cheney on their shows, but I suspect for a far different reason than merely facilitating his books sales.
Americans who take pride in the nation and want the best for our futures will not purchase Cheney’s book. They will not do so for many reasons, but it is my hope that some understand that the best way to put Bush and Cheney off into our past is to start the clock towards their legacy.
Edited By: Sherri Yarbrough
