Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) to find common ground on education reform, inviting the Camelot heir and his family to the White House for a screening of “ Thirteen Days,” a film about JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis. He immediately extended an olive branch to Sen. Those who were - Lincoln (the Civil War) and FDR (the Great Depression) - and extinguished the existential threat, have gone down in history as among the greatest chief executives.īush should be given credit for starting his presidency on a bipartisan note after the divisive Bush v. Few presidents are tested so early in their tenures by such grave crises. The 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks provides an opportunity to reassess what followed. Yet nostalgia for a more traditional president can’t be the sole explanation for the more positive re-evaluation of Bush’s administration. By contrast, Trump landed 41st in the historians’ rankings, and nearly half of Americans polled by the Gallup organization just before he left office predicted that history would rate him as a “poor” president. Was it simply Donald Trump’s unprecedented presidency that reversed Bush’s approval rating slide and raised it to 61 percent by early 2018? Even among historians surveyed by C-SPAN in 2021, he rose four places in as many years, now ranking 29th out of 44 presidents. So far, no songs lauding Bush 43 have made it to the airwaves, but he seems to have overcome Oliver Stone’s scathing portrayal of him in the 2008 film “W.,” along with comedian Will Ferrell’s more good-natured impersonation, which added a faux Bush malaprop, “strategery,” to American political lexicography. Yet Harry Truman’s reputation rebounded in the early 1970s amidst Richard Nixon’s Watergate-infused presidency and the publication of an endearing oral history of the plain-speaking “ Man from Independence.” The band Chicago even recorded a 1975 paean to the 33rd president, singing, “America needs you, Harry Truman. He seemed destined to inhabit the failed presidency category of FDR’s successor, whose opponents branded him with the snarky aphorism, “To err is Truman.” When Bush turned the Oval Office keys over to Barack Obama in 2009, however, with “endless wars” still raging in Afghanistan and Iraq, Osama bin Laden very much alive, and a financial crisis threatening another Great Depression, his approval score had plummeted to 34 percent. His support would soar over 90 percent after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as Americans demonstrated their propensity to “rally ’round the flag” and commanders in chief during wartime.
Although he lost the popular vote in 2000 by a half-million ballots but achieved an Electoral College victory over Vice President Al Gore by the barest of margins (after a Supreme Court decision in Bush’s favor), his initial approval rating was 57 percent, 10 points above the percentage of votes he garnered from the electorate. Their next stop on the campaign trail will be a rally Wednesday in Wyoming, Cheney’s home state.ĪBCNEWS’ Mark Halperin and John Berman contributed to this report.Americans typically support newly elected presidents and those who have left office.
GEORGE BUSH VICE PRESIDENT . FULL
With Cheney’s candidacy now official, he and Bush will begin campaigning together in effort to build enthusiasm for the full ticket in advance of the Republican National Convention, which is set to begin in Philadelphia next Monday. Hours later, the choice became official as Cheney made his first campaign appearance as a vice presidential candidate. John Kasich.Ĭheney and his wife Lynne flew to Austin this morning to join Bush and his wife Laura at the governor’s mansion. Fred Thompson and Bill Frist and Ohio Rep. Frank Keating, who received a call from the governor an hour later, Pennsylvania Gov. That list, ABCNEWS has learned, included Oklahoma Gov. Shortly thereafter, Bush began phoning the other candidates who had been under consideration to notify them of his decision. ET, the governor called Cheney at his home in Dallas to formally ask him to join him on the ticket, and he accepted. It was revealed Monday that Bush had indeed selected Cheney to be his running mate.
0 kommentar(er)
