Editorial: President’s numbers adding up to trouble

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the night President Bush
won the re-election, capturing not only the necessary electoral
votes, but the popular vote as well.

Bush, who won 51 percent of the popular vote and 286 electoral
votes, pointed to those numbers as his reason for claiming a
political mandate for his second term. But now, Bush has a great
many more numbers associated with his administration.

The death toll of U.S. soldiers in Iraq reached 2,000 a week
ago, and has since climbed to 2,024, according to the Department of
Defense. While people look at that number as an ominous milestone,
it is worth noting that 2,271 U.S. soldiers have been killed in
both Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Earlier this year, the Bush administration sorely mishandled the
federal response to Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast region, a
disaster that killed at least 1,200 Americans and displaced
over

1 million more. Estimates of the repair costs range from $70 to
$130 billion, a bill the federal government has largely agreed to
foot.

Then there is the (thus far) one failed Supreme Court
nomination, when Harriet Miers ““ a Bush confidant who was
less-than-qualified to sit on the high court ““ withdrew from
the running.

That came just before the first indictment of a Bush
administration official. I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice
President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, resigned from his
post Friday after being indicted under suspicion of perjury and
obstruction of justice in an investigation into the leak of an
undercover CIA operative’s name. More indictments could
follow, adding further tallies to Bush’s growing woes.

All of these numbers add up to an approval rate hovering near
the freezing point: 40 percent, the lowest of Bush’s time in
the White House. Clearly, the idea of any sort of Bush
“mandate” is gone.

This doesn’t necessarily mean his number is up. Bush still
has three years in the Oval Office, and previous presidents, such
as Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, have faced abysmal approval
numbers in their second terms and found ways to rebound. But that
isn’t a good excuse as to why Bush has recently left
Americans ““ on both sides of the political divide ““
with more questions than answers.

A number of anti-Bush protests are scheduled for today,
including one that will go right through campus, and you
don’t have to be a die-hard liberal to realize that not
everything is as it should be in the White House.

As the future policy-makers of this country, the burden falls
partly on us, the university students, to be a part of the change.
Even students who are not aggravated into action now would do well
to remember the president’s actions in the first year of his
second term, so that when they run for political office ““ or
maybe just check boxes on the ballot ““ they know what
mistakes not to repeat.

Now is not the time for those who take issue with the Bush
administration to stay quiet. If enough voices are raised, people
will stand up and take notice.

Because numbers can work in our favor, too.