Would public sentiment today be different?

Question

... if the last two elections not been controversial decisions? Do you think that the debate surrounding the outcomes of the elections set the groundwork for automatic disapproval of the POTUS? Why or why not? I appreciate respectful answers... Thanks!

Answer 1

I might have to agree with you on this. I know that, if there had not been such a mock up of supposed problems with chad, that more people would have noticed that there was a blatant attempt to disqualify the votes of service man & women who had to vote from overseas.

That, of course, led to a vain attempt to invalidate the last election, as those same people tried to say that it never would have happened had not the first "event" happened the way that it did.

Answer 2

The elections certainly were a factor, but I think the actions of the Republicans over the last 10-12 years are a bigger factor. You have to remember that the republican congress started going after Clinton almost as soon as he gained office. But dispite all the investigations and what not, Clinton still managed to conduct the nations business - many times with the support of the republican controlled congress.

Enter Bush and the 2000 election. Republicans were very anti Democrat because of Clinton and I think the Republicans used that to move the party further to the right - especially on social issues.

Once Bush was elected, we had 6 years of a Republican congress and president which would basically rubber stamp anything for one another - especially post 9/11.

Plus you have to consider all the faulty intelligence that lead to war with Iraq. The fact that the war in Iraq has been badly mismanaged. Plus the sluggish economy at home and Bush's very conservative agenda.

Liberals might be more willing to support Republicans if the Republicans hadn't been pushing them around so much for the last 6 years.

And above all, we can't forget the fact that Bush comes off like an idiot every time he opens his mouth.

Answer 3

At the time (2000) I was certainly perturbed that the election was handed to Bush by his brother and the supreme court. Especially when later a state-wide recount showed that Gore would have eked out a slim victory had than been done.

But I was also satisfied, that the outcome was leveraged from a flawed system and not engineered to put Bush in office illegally. In other words it was not fraud, and Bush was the legitimate electee based on law.

But then his administration proceeded to act as though they had a landslide mandate, rather than less than half the popular vote. To be sure, one can not be paralyzed without such a mandate, but this administration actually took pride in ignoring the will of the people.

So the disapproval of the president is not rooted in a flawed election, it is rooted in flawed policy designed to push an ideology that the majority of the country did not buy into. That they did it so badly (running up the debt, expanding entitlements, and spinning us into an unnecessary war) only heightens the disapproval.

Answer 4

There have been no lawsuits over Michael Moore's written articles about how the 2000 Florida voters list was rewritten to eliminate as many black voters as possible far in advance of the election, nor has anybody challenged his specific assertion that those voters would have made a recount unnecessary. The election in Florida was as crooked as Jeb Bush himself.

That having been said, the initial outrage was totally gone after the terrorist incidents of 9/11. The President chose to misinterpret and abuse that support by using it to advance a political agenda rather than a national one, which has cost him the support of thinking Americans.

The so called "Patriot Act" was more about the war on drug users than terrorism, and has been abused to advance the prohibition agenda so brazenly that denials are more insulting than convincing. It also suspended habeus corpus, making it possible to detain citizens with neither charge nor trial.

Habeus corpus is the cornerstone of our personal security. History has shown that when it is removed it is only a matter of time before those in authority abuse that removal, and history has repeated itself here.

In addition, also supposedly to increase our homeland security, legislative safeguards that were created to protect the minority from abuse by the majority have been removed so the Republicans can force their political agenda through more easily. This, too, was an abuse of the support we gave the President and his supporters.

While any reasonable citizen can support the move into Afghanistan, which had a jihadist regime that was actively supporting al Qaeda, the move into Iraq is another matter. Whatever crimes Saddam may have committed, he was not an ally of the terrorists. Osama himself had called for the overthrow of the secular Bathist regime.

We were warned by our United Nations allies that attacking Iraq would destabilize the entire region and create a power vaccuum that the jihadists would move into, but our President chose to ignore them and send in a posse. Now our troops are effectively pinned down, trying to fight a conventional war with conventional weapons and tactics while the whole region looks to any defense it can find, importing as heroes the very people we want to cast as villains.

This brilliant strategy mirrors our Latin American strategy, demonizing any progressive regime until it feels obliged to work with Cuba, and making America more and more untrusted south of the Rio Grande. Evidently we cannot learn from our errors.

The wasted effort in Iraq has been used by allies of the Bush League to line the pockets of their corporate contributors, while the deficit climbs beyond control. Halliburton has been paid 1,500 dollars per can to deliver Coke to our front line troops! Yet no acknowledgement has been made that we are being flagrantly overcharged.

Add all of these incompetencies to a nasty partisan attitude, demonstrated best by the viscious outing of Valerie Plame because her husband dared to contradict the White House when they lied about his reports, and you have the reasons why many believe this Administration has totally abused the faith we placed in it to do the right thing.

This has not been helped by the systematic revelations that the very Senators who attempted to impeach Bill Clinton for his infidelity and coverup were far more bent, and hiding it. Senators Craig and DeLay sat in judgement while concealing things just as sordid. Newt Gingrich was being unfaithful to his wife as she lay in the hospital recovering from cancer.

So I would suggest that the debate over the elections could have and would have been all but forgotten had the White House been worthy of the trust we placed in them. Instead they played politics during a national crisis, rather like the Buchanan administration before the Civil War.

George W. Bush and his supporters have demonstrated a contempt for the people, and have failed to govern for all of us as their oths of office required. That is why the old issues have resurfaced, as well as the fears that the practice will be repeated next year.

Answer 5

I am 2000% certain, the sentiment would have been different and there would be no 32,000 US deaths in Iraq.
America duped twice :
1. Appointment of Dubya.
2.The Yellow cake and WMD fallacies song and dance.

Answer 6

The President had almost the entire nation rally around him after 9/11. He could have used that support, instead he disregarded it and did his own thing.

Answer 7

The republicans won fair and square. There is no controversity.