As ABC' Noted Now reports, The Sunday New York Times features an interesting article on George W. Bush's political situation which attempts to gauge the President's electoral chances by looking at historical analogies. A nice short read, it sums up American history pretty well. More importantly, it shows that the New York Times can occassionally have a spine and stand up to the President.

Michael Oreskes writes about how the President's situation mirrors that of Harry Truman in 1948 and Jimmy Carter in 1980: that he is "an incumbent facing a dubious electorate that could tip either way." He also writes:

"For Mr. Bush, the country is about evenly divided on approval of his presidency, according to the latest poll. But there are some ominous signs that Mr. Bush is beginning to suffer from a Johnson-style 'credibility gap' after sending the country to war to root out weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda, and being unable to prove either one. When asked by The New York Times and CBS News in June whether Mr. Bush was being completely honest about the war in Iraq, 20 percent of voters said he was mostly lying and 59 percent said he was hiding something. Only 18 percent thought he was telling the entire truth."

I am a big fan of analyzing history to draw comparisons to the present (I employ this tactic often, most notably in this post on Presidential debates and in this post on Oregon politics), so I like this article a lot. Specifically, I think the comparision between Bush and Johnson is dead on (though I don't think there is much comparision between this war and the Vietnam War), and I believe the linking of Bush's chances with Jimmy Carter's 24 years ago really fits. It's when Oreskes tries to bring up Harry Truman, however, that I get a bit skeptical.

I am a huge fan of Harry Truman, having read David McCullough's masterpiece Truman a few years ago. I have been an admirer of his presidency since I saw Gary Sinise portray him in the HBO movie Truman (which I saw in about the fifth grade).



Like Oreskes, I think there are some similarities between Bush 43 and Truman, though different ones than he mentions. Truman became President at the dawn of a new era in international relations (the beginning of the Cold War) just like Bush saw the beginning of the War on Terrorism, and both were seen by many as serving without a real political mandate (Truman because he was merely Vice President, Bush because he did not win the popular vote). I think this is just about where the analogy end, though.

Harry Truman was seen as a distinct underdog against a candidate who had faired relatively well against Franklin Delano Roosevelt four years earlier. Truman also faced defections from his party on the right (Strom Thurmond) and on the left (Henry Wallace). Neither of these can be said about Bush.

Truman was one of the great grassroots politicians of his time, and with Alben Barkley as his running mate, he had one of the Senate's most respected leaders at his side ensuring the South did not entirely defect. This cannot be said about Bush (Cheney is not even in the same ballpark as Barkley).

Truman was sitting atop the most dominant party the nation had seen in generations, the Democrats' New Deal coalition. Bush didn't even win the popular vote.

Truman had a Republican Congress to campaign against, as Dewey ran as a moderate while Truman forced Robert Taft's conservative majority to block all of Dewey's possible platform. Bush has no Democratic Majority to blame for the nation's ills.

I could go on and on with this, as I am such a Truman-phile and do not want his legacy tarnished by comparisons to George W. Bush. This is beside the point, however.

Despite my disapproval of the Truman analogy, this is an important piece to read as it is a clear signal that the media has become completely skeptical of the President, and more importantly his chances at reelection. The "Credibility Gap" comment linking Johnson and Bush particularly underscores this.

A professor of mine told me that he began to be pessimistic about Jimmy Carter's chances at reelection when the President lost the trust and support of the media in 1979-1980. It appears as though this is once again happening today. If George W. Bush is unable to overcome the media's skepticism this time around, he will go down in history along with Carter, his father and the others who were ignominiously turned out of office after just one term.