Kristol errs in predicting Bush’s bottom

William Kristol, “George W. Bush’s Not So Terrible Week,” Weekly Standard, 28 October 2005: Last week the Bush administration’s second-term bear market bottomed out. On Monday, Bush nominated as the next Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who of all the leading candidates will be the central banker least hostile to tax cuts and least likely ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

William Kristol, "George W. Bush's Not So Terrible Week," Weekly Standard, 28 October 2005:

William Kristol, “George W. Bush’s Not So Terrible Week,” Weekly Standard, 28 October 2005:

Last week the Bush administration’s second-term bear market bottomed out. On Monday, Bush nominated as the next Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who of all the leading candidates will be the central banker least hostile to tax cuts and least likely to direct monetary policy to any end other than combating inflation. At the end of the week, the Commerce Department announced that economic growth in the third quarter had been 3.8 percent, suggesting that, thanks in large part to Bush’s supply-side tax cuts, our economy may remain strong enough to overcome the twin hurdles of high energy prices and rising interest rates…. With the d?nouement of the Miers fiasco and the Fitzgerald investigation, President Bush’s beaten-down political fortunes should be ripe for a rebound.

CBS News, “Poll: More Bad News For Bush,” 2 November 2005:

The President’s job approval rating is now 35 percent, his lowest rating since taking office in 2001. More than half the public [57%] disapproves of the job he is doing as president. 77 percent of Republicans approve of his job performance, and the President retains the support of some of his key constituencies. 61 percent of white evangelicals approve of the job he is doing (up from 55 percent a month ago), as do 54 percent of conservatives. Democrats give the President widespread disapproval, and he gets little support from those Americans who profess no strong ties to either side of the ideological divide. Only 31 percent of Independents and 30 percent of moderates now approve of the job he is doing (nearly the same as a month ago).

35% is the lowest level for Bush for the past two months. UPDATE: Hmm…. maybe I’m being unfair to Kristol. Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics points out that the weighting for the poll is a just a bit off. Unweighted, Bush’s approval is still less than 38% though.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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