{"id":847,"date":"2005-08-14T03:43:57","date_gmt":"2005-08-14T03:43:57","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:18","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:18","slug":"somone_tell_fra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=847","title":{"rendered":"Somone Tell Frank Rich…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frank Rich writes<\/a> in the New York Times:<\/p>\n

LIKE the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over. “We will stay the course,” he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch. What do you mean we, white man?<\/p>\n

\nA president can’t stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won’t stay with him. The approval rate for Mr. Bush’s handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend’s Newsweek poll – a match for the 32 percent that approved L.B.J.’s handling of Vietnam in early March 1968. (The two presidents’ overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.) On March 31, 1968, as L.B.J.’s ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn’t seek re-election, commencing our long extrication from that quagmire.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I almost feel churlish wondering how it is that one of the largest opinion-manufacturing organizations in the world can comment on the state of public opinion as the justification for policy changes without at least acknowledging his and his organization’s role in shaping that opinion.<\/p>\n

I’d also feel churlish – if it didn’t feel so good – reminding Mr. Frank that unlike L.B.J., Bush won. <\/p>\n

Yes, his plummeting approval ratings matter – as does the overall level of fatigue around the war. But Bush will be President until January 20, 2009 – no matter what Frank Rich says.<\/p>\n

But we’re in an interesting race here, between the declining credibility and business viability of the New York Times and its peers, and the decline in political will to keep fighting until we win in Iraq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank Rich writes in the New York Times: LIKE the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over. “We will stay the course,” he insistently tells us from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}