There’s only one reason for this over-all high unfavorability: The Iraq War.
You don’t think that the biggest recession in half a century — one that has thrown 20 percent of people out of work (if you cut thru the gov’t obfuscation) and turned us into Foreclosure Nation — might have a tiny bit to do with Hoover’s/er, Bush’s unpopularity? I’d say that’s the beginning and the ending of the answer.
Yes, I know that Obama has made it last longer than it should have, and go even deeper — but it started under W, including a stock market crash and a financial seize-up that had average people worrrying about bank runs and mass joblessness. All of that was happening during the last six months of Bush. Go back and read the news from August of 2008 thru Jan 2009. We were in a financial meltdown - Hoover Part Deux.
I guess you could be right, WilliamIII, which is a sad thing, since the one thing that clearly is not Bush’s fault is the financial collapse, which was brought about by decades of liberal policies — especially in the housing industry — policies which Bush did try to reverse, though not very vigorously.
I would argue that one of the reasons Bush was so unsuccessful at stopping Barney Frank and his allies from wrecking the financial markets with their bad-loan-guarantees was that he was so mired in Iraq and had spent all his political capital in Iraq.
I could be wrong, but I still believe that had Bush limited the war to Afghanistan he would have governed more as a conservative domestically and that the financial collapse would have been lessened... maybe even avoided.
But instead, Bush was hobbled because of the Iraq War and his legacy is to be hated. That hatred, in my opinion, is either directly or indirectly related to that war.
In my opinion that war directly lead to the election of Obamugabe and is thus the biggest single political blunder in US history. That’s my opinion. I admit I could be wrong.