Craig Crawford's 1600: Liberating Numbers

http://public.cq.com/docs/cqw/weeklyreport110-000002538552.html

Craig Crawford's 1600: Liberating Numbers
By Craig Crawford, CQ Columnist

Can bottom-of-the-barrel poll numbers actually liberate a second-term president to do whatever he wants? That certainly seems to be how George W. Bush sees things these days.

Mindful that he’ll never run for office again and seemingly unfazed by his dismal ratings (32 percent approval in this month’s Gallup poll, just 1 percentage point better than his worst ever), the president is doubling down on a variety of issues that helped make him so unpopular in the first place — from escalating the Iraq War to relaxing immigration laws and vetoing stem cell research.

Either Bush is making a visionary play that will win his redemption in the history books or else he seems destined to be remembered as one of the most spectacular failures of all time.

Far from being chastened by months of bad news from the pollsters, Bush remains defiant, refusing to back down to liberals and conservatives alike. Anti-war lawmakers on Capitol Hill gave up on getting this White House to compromise. And the president even went out of his way to infuriate his own conservative base with the immigration overhaul plan he’s put together with the Democrats.

Perhaps Bush feels liberated by his plight, free to do whatever he thinks is right without regard to political expediency. If he pulls this off and somehow reclaims his popularity before leaving office in a year-and-a-half — or later among historians — Bush would be a model for future presidents in such trouble with the public.

Since modern polling began, only two presidents have been as unpopular for as long as Bush, and each represents one of the tracks Bush’s legacy might follow. Harry S Truman was too disfavored to run for re-election in 1952 but is now remembered well as an honest and plain-spoken leader. Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace in 1974 and never fully recovered from the stain of the Watergate scandal.

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Bush thinks that David McCullough, or some other "pop" historian will write a book about him in 20 years calling him a bold, visionary and great president. So Bush is trying to play out the script.

either way; can't prove it by me. When has he ever done anything that was 'right', instead of politically expedient?