Opinion
Bush? McCain? Who are they?
By: Jeff Dufour
Editor at Large/Columnist, "Yeas & Nays"
12/12/08 12:05 AM EST
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President Bush won 48 percent and 51 percent of the popular vote, respectively, in his two runs for the presidency, while John McCain took 46 percent in this year's contest. But you'd never know it to look at a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll by Peter Hart and Bill McInturff.
In the survey of 1,000-plus Americans conducted last week, only 32 percent admitted voting for McCain, and only 33 percent said they voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004.
Only 18 percent said they would "miss" Bush.
Hart, the Democratic half of the polling duo, appeared at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast on Thursday to discuss the results. Bush "will be regarded as worse than most presidents," he said. "And I don't think time is going to change that. He's going to be seen as a Herbert Hoover that Democrats are going to continue to run against. ... Even the majority of Republicans and conservatives say, 'We're not going to miss him.'"
But, he added, Vice President Cheney "is challenging Bush for the worst numbers." Indeed, only 21 percent said they viewed Cheney as either "very positive" or "somewhat positive."
The one person to come out of the administration looking good, said Hart, is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Forty-seven percent said they had a positive view of her, against only 18 percent that look at her negatively.
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