Meet the Base

George W. Bush fails, once again, to energize his core supporters.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


One of the more startling political discoveries of late has been that there are people on the right who think George W. Bush is doing a lousy job as president. To take the two most salient examples, fiscal conservatives are eyeing the mega-deficit with growing alarm, and Iraq hawks, some of them, are starting to admit doubts about the administration’s handling of prewar intelligence.

The American electorate being almost perfectly divided between reds and blues, Bush can’t afford to turn off his base; every vote counts.
Which may explain the widely noted red-meat partisanship of his State of the Union address, and the decision, rare for this president, to sit for a TV interview this weekend. Bush’s hour-long head-to-head with Tim Russert presented Bush with an opportunity to dismiss doubts about his leadership and shore up support from his core support.

(As Tom Shales points out in the Washington Post, “When the matter of the election came up, Bush exuded confidence … But if he and his inner circle were that confident, Bush wouldn’t have been giving the interview in the first place.”)

In the event, Bush’s performance didn’t make much of an impact either way, which, given his sagging poll numbers, probably translates to a net loss.

Former Reagan and Bush, Sr. speechwriter Peggy Noonan notes from the great height of the Wall Street Journal‘s opinion page:

“The Big Russ interview will not be a big political story in terms of Bush supporters suddenly turning away from their man.

So I’m not sure he disturbed his base. I think he just failed to inspire his base. Which is serious enough–the base was looking for inspiration, and needed it–but not exactly fatal.

Hardly a ringing endorsement.

The conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan, who has lately been increasingly hard on Bush,
detects a certain hesitancy in the president.

“During the part of the interview when Bush could have strongly supported his nation-building in Iraq, and linked it to tackling the deeper problems that gave us 9/11, he was defensive and almost apologetic. I wonder: does he actually regret being a nation-builder? … In this kind of enterprise we need conviction at the top. At least more conviction than we saw yesterday.”

And conservative blogger Joshua Claybourn
unpacks Bush’s claim that “If you look at the appropriations bills that were passed under my watch, in the last year of President Clinton, discretionary spending was up 15 percent, and ours have steadily declined.”

Says Claybourn:

“This is deceptive and false. Discretionary spending has not declined, and most definitely not “steadily” declined. Discretionary spending has increased by 15% during Bush’s first two years in office, more than it did during Clinton’s first four years. Total outlays fell under Mr. Clinton, from 22.2 percent of the GDP to 18.4 percent of the GDP in 2000. By 2002, the budget consumed 19.5 percent of the GDP.”

Arnold Beichman, a scholar at the Hoover Institution, writes in the National Review Online that Bush needs to “stop being defensive about the intelligence failure,” and shift his emphasis to the question of whether “the world, especially the Middle East, better off with the overthrow and capture of Saddam Hussein?” (Er, hasn’t he been doing that? A lot?)

Bush’s backers were watching his style as well as his message. He looked worn out by hard work, Noonan says, but also nervous and touchy — never an attractive combination:

“Otherwise, in terms of content, not a great deal new emerged from the interview. With television, though, style can easily be content, and Bush, from the outset of the session, came across as defensive and slightly, subtly agitated, with that “I’d rather be anywhere else right now” demeanor hiding behind his careful smile. “

Bush, concludes Noonan, might better “spend the next nine months giving speeches, and limit interviews.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate