How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (by Matt Singer)

President Bush's approval rating has dropped to a mere 42%, a rather low figure by anyone's standard. That is not surprising, given that Bush has focused on the wrong priorities, trying to address Social Security, rather than the fiscal problems created by Medicare or his tax cuts; and bogging this country down in Iraq, while failing to deal with larger, more difficult problems in North Korea and Iran.

But perhaps most amazingly, independents are giving the President a lower approval rating than Democrats. Bush is still holding his base, the defend-torture crowd, but is being abandoned by the rest of the country. The recent moves by the White House and others to denigrate those that disagree with them is likely only to solidify these numbers, leaving us with what Jerome Armstrong sees as the coming 40-60 nation.

Bush won re-election by mercilessly attacking his opponent and denigrating Kerry's abilities, rather than relying on his own record. That success won him re-election, but the victory is proving pyrrhic. Like Gray Davis in California, who received a second-term only after a brutally negative campaign, Bush is going to end up in the tank himself.

The politics of negativitity and destruction, of fear and division, are failing.

--Matt Singer