The Bush Bounce, Part Deux

I wrote my earlier post first thing this morning. In the meantime, today’s Rasmussen tracking poll shows an absolute dead-heat: 47.3% apiece for George W. Bush and John Kerry. (It is only in the last four days that Rasmussen started reporting his results in tenths of a percent. I personally think this imparts greater precision to the numbers than they deserve.)

As I mentioned in my earlier post, Scott Rasmussen said that the results he published yesterday (a 1.1% lead for Bush) included an extremely pro-favorable Kerry sample on Saturday, partly offsetting pro-Bush results on Friday and Sunday. As Rasmussen is now showing a tied race, it means that two of the last three days have been pro-Kerry. Perhaps the Bush bounce is now retreating — as “bounces” invariably do.

This is the first presidential race in my adult lifetime in which a candidate has support that I simply cannot comprehend. That candidate is George W. Bush. Oh, I’m not talking about Bush’s core support among the Republican stalwarts, who clearly would vote for any member of their party — just as the Democratic base does for their candidate. But the party faithful get a candidate to no more than a 30–35% standing. The rest of a candidate’s support are the so-called “persuadable voters.” And how any significant percentage of persuadable voters could be supporting Bush just baffles me.

I mean, what has George W. Bush done that worked? He invaded Afghanistan, but failed to find Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar. He invaded Iraq, but failed to find the WMD that were the reason for the invasion in the first place. Not one of his domestic programs has produced the result that was advertised. Not one. His second-term domestic agenda, which the conservative columnist George Will described as “pedestrian,” included nothing but a bunch of old Republican chestnuts that have been on the table for years, but have never come close to becoming law.

In short, the Bush platform comes down to, “Give me four more years, and perhaps I’ll get it right this time.” Or perhaps it comes down to, “Whatever you may think of me, at least I’m not John Kerry.” It’s a sign of how feeble a candidate Kerry is, that he has managed so far to squander such an obvious opportunity.