The Politico has a pretty good article explaining why the country is shifting left. However, there is one statement in particular that I have contention with:

When conservative Fox News introduced its own satirical program, modeled after Stewart’s, it received a critical beating. The cultural zeitgeist had shifted. Of all people, former Vice President Al Gore is considered kind of cool, while Bush and Vice President Cheney have become not just unpopular, but are objects of ridicule.

That last part about Bush and Cheney is what I disagree with (though I have to wonder–Al Gore is “cool”? Hmm.) The thing is this: Bush and Cheney were objects of ridicule when they came into office, or at least quickly thereafter. Nobody seems to remember that in his first eight months, Bush was going down in the polls as quickly as he has in years since. He started out around 55% and after eight months was at about 50% and declining. He was seen as weak, laughable, and not good for the country. He was violating treaties, bullying his way around Washington, and essentially making an ass of himself.

The Politico’s argument, as with conventional wisdom, would have you believe that Bush and Cheney are now uncool because of the recent shift to the left. But Bush and Cheney were uncool from the start; remember, they lost the 2000 election by half a million votes, and “won” only through election fraud and a right-leaning Supreme Court. A half million more people voted for the “uncool” Al Gore. It was never that Bush and Cheney were more popular.

Remember the political cartoons of the time, how Bush was a kid sitting in Cheney’s lap? How the comedians were going wild making fun of the two? How they were the object of national, and international scorn?

The only thing that changed was 9/11 and fear. That’s what created the artificial upwards zoom in the polls. Bush was never actually popular, never really “cool.” He was simply the guy in office when everybody suddenly got the crap scared out of them.

As I have pointed out many times before, Bush’s poll numbers have shown a striking regularity of pattern: he gets a lift in the polls only from artificial, external events; otherwise, he always progresses in a predictable, downward pattern, until he hits bottom and levels out (which is where he is now). Bush received poll bounces after 9/11, the start of the Iraq War, the capture of Saddam Hussein, and the huge campaign blitz of 2004. That’s it. The pattern can be seen clearly on this graph. It really is unmistakable, and rather remarkable–I don’t know if any other president has shown so clear and true a pattern as this. Had it not been for 9/11, Bush would have reached 40% by sometime in early-to-mid 2003, and never would have recovered, losing the 2004 election handily.

To sum up, Bush and Cheney have not “become” unpopular–they never were in the first place. It is only the wearing off of 9/11 and the resulting fear that is allowing their intrinsic unpopularity to reassert itself.