Presidential Approval Ratings and the State of our Nation

by Lydia T. aka Escape Artist

So, President Bush is at, like, an all-time low as far as popularity ratings go. This means that he’s an incompetent president with no skill or qualifications to be in office. He started a costly war and so many people oppose it, it isn’t even funny. So therefore we need to start looking for a new president right now. Right? I mean, if everyone’s against him and his war, then he should just resign from office before he gets America into anymore trouble. That is wrong. What much of the left-wing press doesn’t seem to remember is that one of the most-admired presidents of America had low popularity ratings. He indirectly started a war, a war, which, at the time, people opposed on both sides. This was a particularly cruel war, in which thousands of men on both sides lost their lives, and America unfortunately lost either way. President Abraham Lincoln had low popularity ratings while he was in office. The whole reason South Carolina declared secession was because Lincoln, a Republican, had taken the office. Despite his attempts to promise the Southerners that their way of life wouldn’t be threatened (neither would it be expanded), the South Carolina secession led the way to a long chain of events that culminated in the Civil War. Lincoln fought the battle for America with humor, intelligence, and determination. But at the time, he was not a popular president, and, of course, a war going on in your backyard can’t be too popular.

Here we are, in 2006. We are whiny backstabbers who don’t appreciate what our men and women overseas are doing. We undermine their every move and contradict their own opinions. “They hate the war!” we say. “They just fight because it’s their duty!” When we say that, we ignore what the soldiers themselves are saying. Staff Sergeant Jamie McIntyre of Queens, New York, recently said the following*.

"I look at the faces and see fellow human beings, and I say, ‘OK. This is a sacrifice I have to make to bring them freedom.’ That’s why I joined the military. Not for the college money, for doing what’s right. Fighting under our flag. That’s what our flag stands for. I believe in that stuff. Yeah, we might lose American soldiers, but they (the Iraqi people) are going to lose a society, lose people. You’ve got to look at the bigger picture. I’ve lost friends, and it hurts. But that’s even more of a reason why I say stay. It’s something that’s got to be done. If we don’t do it, who will?"

Don’t we have better things to do than critisize the work of these brave men and women?!? We sound like ungrateful wretches.

The idea that the war in Iraq is far less popular than any war has ever been isn’t right. There has always been some small fraction of Americans who hate the war, whatever it might be for, no matter whom it’s defending (us or them). It might interest all the peace freaks out there to know that the very earliest anti-war demonstrators in America were during the Revolutionary war. They were the Tories—the traitorous American citizens who supported the rule of a tyrannical and vindictive king. So think of that the next time you storm around a park waving signs that down President Bush and the war in Iraq. Anyhow, pardon my side trail there.

President Bush’s war, as the war in Iraq is called, is unpopular simply because every war in American history has been unpopular at some point or another. There’s nothing else to be said for it. No logic, no clear thinking. Brash left-wing poppycock has clouded our vision and our media so badly that we don’t see the war in Iraq as being essential to our freedom (as well as the Iraqis’). I guess the left-wing media just doesn’t like the idea of helping other people by our sacrifices. That’ pure selfishness. They really need to get over that, and they need to see that President Bush is making the best of the situation he was given. He came in at a hard place, and his administration wasn’t without flaws. But then, whose has been?

*Exerpt from The American Enterprise, March 2006.