What About Social Security?

This post (and the bulk of the comments), forget one big elephant in the room when tracing the steady decline of Bush's popularity since getting reelected in 2004.

Terry Schiavo, and the Iraq war certainly played a part (and a very big part) in the Spring the Spring and Summer of 2005, as it turned out. But the thing that really sent Bush's death spiral into motion was the attempt to privatize Social Security.

Bush came out of the election in 2004 assuming he had a lot more political capital than he did, and immediately wasted all that political capital on the third rail of politics, Social Security.

It was an incredibly hubristic move at the time, immediately severing any goodwill that may have come to the GOP and Bush from seniors, a group that had been a big part of why Bush got elected and reelected in the first place. It cost him. Katrina, and the Terri Schiavo matters also played their parts, but it was Social Security that got the ball rolling.

He's been in pretty steady decline ever since.

Update: Yes, I know Katrina was actually in August/September 2005. I'd really meant to say 2005 as a whole, but was thinking of the Schiavo affair when I typed Spring.