Bush asked his boss...

[Chris Alger]

Sure, center-right Democrats (like Hillary) have always been huge MIC supporters. But you won't see her get passionate about defense when she's stumping in the primaries. Contrast her rhetoric to the standard jingoist rant included in nearly every Republican speech that touches foreign policy. The standard GOP axiom-myth is Carter and Clinton recklessly weakened the Pentagon.

[Chris Alger]

[ QUOTE ]
I could have sworn President Bush was just re-elected and got more votes than any other Presidential candidate in history.

[/ QUOTE ]
This kind of meaningless statistic is an example of what I called dumb guy credulty. U.S. voter population was higher than ever, therefore more people than ever voted for Bush and more people than ever voted against him. 40% of the eligible elctorate didn't even participate. The important fact is that U.S. political institutions, including the Bush presidency, are widely perceived by Americans as failing.

[slickpoppa]

[ QUOTE ]
Are we basing this on some poll- the political equivalent of sticking your finger in the wind?

I could have sworn President Bush was just re-elected and got more votes than any other Presidential candidate in history.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you are going to question the validity of polls, don't use equally bad statistics yourself. The fact that Bush got more votes than any candidate in history has a lot to do with the fact that the US population is higher now than ever before. In 2004 John Kerry got more popular votes (59 mil) than Ronald Reagan did in 1984 (54.5 mil). Does that suggest that Kerry was more popular than Reagan?

Furthermore, there are plenty of statistics which suggest that Bush's reelection was not so impressive:

[ QUOTE ]
Bush won with the smallest margin of victory for a sitting president in U.S. history in terms of the percentage of the popular vote. (Bush received 2.5% more than Kerry; the closest previous margin won by a sitting President was 3.2% for Woodrow Wilson in 1916.) In terms of absolute number of popular votes, his victory margin (approximately 3 million votes) was the smallest of any sitting President since Harry S. Truman in 1948.

[/ QUOTE ] link

I don't really care how Bush's popularity ranks historically, but I hate it when people use bad statistics (such as Bush's total number of votes) to back up their assertions.

[James Boston]

[ QUOTE ]
and got more votes than any other Presidential candidate in history.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not taking sides here, but you do realize Kerry got more votes than most people who have been elected President. This is a meaningless number.

[BCPVP]

[ QUOTE ]
Given that Bush is the least popular President since Nixon, perhaps you meant voters "thought"?

[/ QUOTE ]
I also seem to remember him having the highest popularity rating. And the president's popularity has little to do with the lack of original ideas among the left.