Still A 'C' Student
In his latest Against the Grain commentary, CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer assesses the Bush administration at the half-year mark.
Around spring vacation time, President Bush was assaulted with appraisals of his 100 Days Legacy. He thought that was really mean. He wanted everyone to hold off until at least summer vacation, the six-month mark, sort of like semester break freshman year.
Not a problem, dude. But the time has come. We're six months in and the Honcho in Chief is off to his Texas ranch for most of August. It's report card time.
Personally, I think Bush gave a pretty fair self-assessment when he said at Yale University's 300th commencement in May: "To the C students, I say, 'You too can be president of the United States.'" Bush remains a C student at this point and there's plenty of room for improvement.
This happens to be roughly how the public grades the president, too. At the 100-day mark, a CBS News poll put Bush's approval rating at 56 percent; that's notably better than Bill Clinton's score at the same point in his first term, slightly below Bush the Elder's mark, and well below Ronald Reagan's. In a more recent CBS News/New York Times poll, the president's rating slipped a tad, but he's still right in the middle of the bell curve; a C student again.
For perspective, it's useful to recall what a D minus student looks like. By June 1993, Bill Clinton had a string of debacles in his wake that made the first part of his administration look like a Jerry Lewis movie. Remember? Gays in the military, Zoe Baird, Kimba Wood, Waco, firings at the White House travel office, Lani Guinier, lawsuits over secret meetings of Mrs. Clinton's health-care group and 7 percent unemployment. Now that's failure.
On the other end of the spectrum, by June 1981, the Reagan presidency looked like, well, a Ronald Reagan movie. Maybe even Jimmy Stewart. Reagan had survived an assassination attempt, had Congress on a leash and was giving symbolic succor to a country disenchanted by Vietnam, Watergate and Jimmy Carter's cardigan sweaters. That's an A.
George W. Bush has delivered the classic mixed bag. His greatest accomplishment, of course, is the tax cut. Its passage, however, did not make the president beloved from Bangor to Berkeley. The public was ambivalent about the need for a tax reduction all along. That's partly why it's so amazing that he got it past the Democrats; amazing except for the opposition's ineptness. The greater wisdom of the tax package will have to be judged much later.
In modern American politics, the absence of scandal is itself a major success. Bush gets credit here. None of his appointees have caused big-time embarrassment and he hasn't been caught with his fingers in any cookie jars.
A related success comes from Laura Bush. A recent Pew Research Poll showMrs. Bush is very popular, notably more than Mrs. Clinton was in 1993.
The Bush presidency's biggest failure has a name: James Jeffords. Losing control of a chamber of Congress in midterm is a unique foul-up in our history, and it instantly complicated the president's life.
Now, moderate Republicans (a very small sect, by the way) have extraordinary power not just in the Senate, with its one vote difference, but also in the House. The moderates almost sabotaged Bush's plan to get more money for religious charities and they're tying the White House in knots over the Patients Bill of Rights. Bush's cherished education reforms, meanwhile, have stalled out somewhere between the House and the Senate.
In short, Bush needs to figure out how to deal with the moderates in his own party if he's going to get any more of his domestic agenda passed before Congress goes into pre-election paralysis, which happens in January 2002.
Just as problematic, Bush's environmental and energy policies are just plain unpopular, according to the CBS News polls. The public is skeptical of the administration's focus on energy production and deregulation, as well as Bush-Cheney oil industry ties. Their disapproval of Bush's environmental positions is strong. These issues have become important in the public's overall view of Bush, much to his chagrin.
In Bush's favor, the public doesn't appear to be expecting much from him in the short term. As Republican pollster Frank Luntz told The Washington Post, "There's no demand on the part of the public for anything right now."
The times call for a C student.
©MMI, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved