The Price Of Incompetence

From TIME Magazine:

A spate of good news at home and abroad has so far failed to boost how Americans feel about President Bush's job performance. Bush's approval rating slipped to 35% in a TIME poll taken this week, down from 37% in March (and 53% in early 2005). Only 33% of Americans in the survey said they approved of Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq, vs. 35% in March, and 47% in March 2005. His management of the U.S. economy lost supporters, too, as 36% approved, compared with 39% three months earlier. Bush's handling of the war on terror saw a slight gain in support, from 44% to 45%.

Bush's poll numbers remain stuck in a rut despite several high-profile victories scored recently by the Bush Administration. Earlier this month, U.S. forces killed al-Qaeda leader Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi in an air raid in Iraq. Also this month, Karl Rove escaped indictment in the CIA leak investigation. And the Commerce Department reported today that the U.S. economy grew 5.6% in the first quarter of 2006, the fastest growth in more than two years.

These numbers must be particularly troubling to GOP strategists, who have apparently decided to push Bush's Iraq Catastrophe as a major campaign issue in the run-up to the Mid-Term elections (by the way, 66 people were killed and 87 were wounded in Iraq today in a single car bombing).

The Democrats should of course be delighted that the GOP is doing this, but something tells me they're going to screw it all up and let the Republicans get the upper hand on this particular issue. Karl Rove, although one evil sonofabitch, is a master at turning a political liability into a strength, particularly when his back is against the wall.

Rove's "Swift Boat" operation, for example, successfully negated John Kerry's honorable military career as a plus for the Democrats in 2004, something that Rove had to do given that George W. Bush actually deserted his post during the Viet Nam War.