Bush Is In Trouble, Scandals Popping Up Everywhere

Ken Fireman, in Newsday (July 1, 2004):

The vice president upbraids a senator on the floor of the chamber for what he calls personal attacks, then ends the conversation with a transitive verb straight from the barnyard.

A chief architect of the Iraq war refers to journalists covering the conflict as cowardly rumor-mongers during a congressional hearing, and is forced to apologize the following day.

The president himself finds it necessary to be questioned by a special prosecutor probing the outing of a covert CIA operative by someone in the administration bent on political retaliation.

The White House, faced with a prisoner abuse scandal that won't go away, is forced into the ultimate embarrassment of a Clinton-style document dump - only to discover that the new material only fuels the controversy.

Washington-watchers have seen these tropisms before, and they are not symptoms of health. They are the hallmarks of an administration under increasing pressure, and starting to stagger and stumble under the accumulated weight.

Indeed, the best news for President George W. Bush in the recent flood of poll numbers is the fact that he is still essentially even with Democratic opponent John Kerry despite all the recent setbacks and missteps.

But Bush's good news begins and ends there. A new CBS-New York Times poll puts his approval rating at 42 percent, the lowest of his presidency.

Then there is what might be called the poll of the box office. Movie-goers are lining up to watch"Fahrenheit 911," which portrays the president as clueless, duplicitous and corrupt.

Most worrisome for Bush is the finding in the latest Gallup poll that for the first time a majority of Americans say it was a mistake to go to war in Iraq. It took three years for a majority to turn against the war in Vietnam - but once that happened, Gallup notes, support for the war never regained 50 percent.