KARMA POLICE OR A PRESIDENCY RUNNING LOW ON POLITICAL CAPITAL?

By: Xaivier Martin

Whether you believe in God, Allah, Buddha, U2's Bono, or you don't believe in any supreme being, there is one universally-undeniable truth: what goes around, comes around. Call it whatever you want; karma, chi, fate or just desserts. Find yourself on the wrong side of it and life just sucks.

November 2004: we all remember hearing or reading about President Bush's first press conference after being declared the winner by everyone, but the eternally optimistic (and bitter) Democrats who held out hope. In that press conference, Bush spoke of the election results serving as a mandate by the people. He also spoke about feeling that he thought he'd earned some "political capital," and he planned to "take it out for a spin" . After all, he'd just had a victory in which he'd received a higher percentage of the vote than Bill Clinton.

March 26, 2005: several independent polls show Bush with an approval rating of 45%, as opposed to the 52% he received in polls taken the last two months. Oh what a difference a few weeks make! Now, as easy as it may be to suggest that Bush and his large, trunk-carrying friends are experiencing the karma backlash that they deserve, we should look a little deeper.

One of the issues that the real "Dr. Evil" - Karl Rove - hit people over their heads with during the election was the thought that if Democrats were in the White House all hell would break loose in Iraq and conditions would just get worse. The only thing is, since November, all anyone hears are about how many more U.S. troops have died on a given day. Undaunted, Republicans nearly broke their arms patting themselves on the back over the democratic elections that took place nearly two months ago in Iraq. Logic says the elections should have given the Republican Party a pretty big boost in public opinion, but as was stated earlier, Bush's approval rating was not affected. How could that be?

Take into consideration that at the same time as the elections, Bush rolled (or more accurately, dragged) out his plan to save Social Security. His legacy would not be weighed down by jobless rates or the worst single attack on U.S. soil. Bush had conquered Saddam Hussein and now set his sights on taming the 400-pound gorilla in the room that everyone else had intentionally ignored. The thing King George failed to realize - that Clinton, Bush's father and others before knew - is that, if provoked, the 400-pound gorilla will retaliate with a political punch the likes of which he'd never seen.

Still, Bush is the same man who entered May 2004 with a 46% approval rating and managed to get elected to office with a one-and-a-half percent majority. Say what you will about Clinton being bulletproof, but with everything Clinton dealt with, his approval rating rarely if ever dropped below 50%. Bush has had more go wrong in his tenure as President on top of terminal approval ratings and so far has managed to come out the other end relatively unscathed. He may not be the smartest man or even a good speaker, but he has been up to this point, the closest thing to untouchable this side of Elliot Ness.

With all of that said, Bush finds himself under siege. He is under siege by his own party, Democrats, the AARP and atheists. With unanimous court rulings coming down on the Schiavo appeals, he can't even get a break from the same Supreme Court that gave him his start in the 2000 election. Alas, this last attempt to take his political capital for a spin may just have taken the Bush train dangerously off track.

Not that he has the time, but if Bush ever watched his fictional counterpart on NBC's "The West Wing," he would have known that the Schiavo case was only worth a meeting and maybe some polling to see what public reaction would be to his involvement. The fictional President Josiah Bartlett (played brilliantly by Martin Sheen) would have handed the Schiavo case over to a senior counsel member and let that be it. Even if Bush and the Republicans had been successful in their attempt to keep Terri Schiavo alive, it would have publicly been seen as the administration and Congress spending valuable time - and tax payers' money - on a situation and person that didn't warrant it.

In the meantime, gas prices continue to skyrocket out of control - the national average is $2.11 a gallon - and people are slowly but surely distancing themselves from Bush's Social Security plan, while the economy seems to be going nowhere but south. During a campaign, the public will become concerned with whatever their candidate says they should be concerned about. After the smoke clears and the pomp and circumstance is through, the people care about themselves - and if they have any reason to believe their needs aren't being taken care of, things get real ugly, real quick.

In the end, the American people don't really care if Iraq has democratic elections and they don't care about saving the life of someone who supposedly doesn't want to live and is in a vegetative state anyway. The public cares about getting their money should they be fortunate to be able to retire and they care about sons/daughters, mothers/fathers and friends/family dying on foreign soil at the hands of those they are supposed to be helping. Lastly, the people care that it takes three or four more dollars to pay for a week's worth of gas.

If Bush wants to stop the bleeding, he'd better start caring about those things as well. The alternative is suffering second term shell shock and a being trapped on a runaway train quickly running short on political capital. Oil prices being as high as they are, it would be a harsh turn of karma if Bush's administration ran out of gas just months out of the gate wouldn't it?