Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of the Washington Times, has an election-year warning for President Bush.
The pessimists among the president's best friends see an eerie similarity in the election-year prospects of father and son.Posted by Alan at January 23, 2004 05:59 AMThe elder Mr. Bush went into 1988 with sky-high approval ratings, which collapsed with his pursuit of votes he was never going to get. George W.'s approval rating sparkles at 60 percent or so, enough to fuel a landslide if it holds up. But that's a big "if," because he, too, is chasing phantoms at the expense of turning out big numbers from his base.
Almost any reading of the senior-citizen constituency finds that seniors are counting on Democrats, not Republicans, to expand the drug-prescription program. Hispanic voters see the Republican resistance to amnesty and expanded illegal-immigrant rights, notice that the president couldn't get away from the subject fast enough in his State of the Union address, and put it down to half-hearted pandering. The first President Bush signed on to many of the Democratic favorite things, too, environmental, civil rights and disabilities initiatives, and all he got for his trouble was personal satisfaction. Liberal voters treated him to Bronx cheers on their way to the polls. Many of the voters who wanted to be his friends felt snubbed and frost-bitten by what they regarded as a cold shoulder. If history repeats itself, the result this time will be tragedy, not farce.