Bush's approval rating

Trying to figure out what to write this week was giving me a real headache. Do you guys really want to hear anymore about Katrina? I promised myself I'd avoid Iraq and the whole 9-11 remembrance thing. Not that these aren't all worthy topics. But let's face it, all I'd be doing is recycling the information that is already out there. Then, I opened up the Sunday paper and there was my savior - George W. Bush.

Bush's poll numbers have dropped below the 40 percent mark. His overall job approval rating came in at 39 percent following Hurricane Katrina. The real story isn't that the numbers were low, though. The real story is that the mid-term campaigns are just a few months off and because of the way the administration has so tightly controlled what all Republican party members have been allowed to say, it may be hard for those is hotly contested states to distance themselves from Bush's bumbles.

Now, to be fair, Bush hasn't been all bad. He lowered taxes, restarted a recession bound economy and stood as the father figure we all needed immediately following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. But not since F.D.R. has a president had so many major calamities occur during his terms in office.

F.D.R. dealt with THE Great Depression, The Dust Bowl (look it up) and a World War started by a sneak attack. Of course, the two major distinctions are Roosevelt was a Democrat and his challenges were meted out over four terms. Bush, on the other hand, has dealt with nearly the same series of events and most of them in a four year period. But the big reason that you don't hear anyone comparing Bush to F.D.R. is that Bush, while making strides in little areas, has royally screwed up in the eyes of the public when handling the big things.

While he started in the right direction right after September 11, he expanded his “War On Terror” into the greater Middle East with mixed results and no exit strategy. And Bush had us on the right track when it came to the economy, but again it was derailed by his inability to plan and save. Tax cuts are great when you can afford them by cutting spending, but running up more debt is never a good idea. My Great Grandma Ida used to tell me to save for a rainy day ... Well, we somehow managed to spend a whole lot of savings and now that the rainy day has arrived, we're scrambling to pull together the cash.

Bush so far has been an above average president with a mix of successes and failures that even the most revered in history would've struggled with in their times. The problem for the Republicans in the midterms is that Bush screw ups have been much bigger and much more visible than his successes. And no it isn't because of the "liberal media." I'm not saying they don't exist, I'm just saying that creating 2000 jobs isn't as impressive as losing 2000 lives at war.

Liberal media or not, the Republicans were given the keys to the kingdom for nearly six years and while they've accomplished a lot, they've let their leaders undo a great deal of the progress they had made. The overall approval rating is below 40 percent, but the president’s rating is only a reflection of the anger many Americans feel towards failed polices that both Congress and the President are going to have to answer for in the weeks and years to come. But at least for now, regardless of the President’s approval ratings, we still have football.

Brock Tanner does his research for this column in his underwear. He can be found throwing half-full beer cans at the television every time a Fox News Alert plays and its Greta Van Susteren talking about someone "missing." Contact him at brocktanner@hobotrashcan.com.