Collegiate Times

Last Thursday night, Virginia Tech was lucky enough to be blessed by the presence of former presidential strategist and current editorial journalist George Stephanopoulos. In his speech at Burruss Hall, Stephanopoulos made a comment about U.S. presidents working in their second term. They ?are bedeviled by problems,? he observed, specifying that George W. Bush?s biggest devil is the war in Iraq. Stephanopoulos, along with many other pundits, has been all over Bush?s recent popular and political decline. Some have even gone so far as to predict the complete doom of his administration by inaccurately labeling it a ?lame duck? despite there being a couple of years to go before we start seeing ?Clinton/Edwards? bumper stickers.

Yet there is no question that President Bush is facing some of his most frustrating days. His polls have been well below 50 percent for months now, a fact the media tends to point out first before launching into any other criticisms of Bush and his administration. This writer is admittedly also obviously guilty of this by mentioning it in here. Nevertheless, the most reliable polls are accurate samples of public opinion, and when people read in Newsweek that their president only has 36 percent of the nation?s support, they are inclined to believe he is doing something wrong, even if they aren?t always sure exactly what.

Beyond the polls, second-term Bush is beset on all sides from scandals, failures and most recently, dissention. However, despite all of his influence and power as president, Bush is only one man with one administration that is not permanent.

What is of greater concern to the country is the state of its two main political parties ? unofficially permanent entities that are suffering from their own lack of harmony. While Bush himself may not be as concerned with unifying his party as he might have been in the past, the GOP is by no means in agreement with all of the president?s decisions, and it is loosing cohesion as a result.

Republican congressmen and women have to make a choice whether they will supply their unwavering support to the president as they campaign for the election in November. With Bush being so unpopular, it is tempting to distance themselves from his politics to boost their own numbers. But, as it has been observed in the past, the ?every person for him or herself? mentality of elections doesn?t work in two-party America.

As much as we would prefer our politicians to run on what they each individually believe is good for the nation, the two parties usually dictate spoken and unspoken guidelines for which issues to support or condemn, creating strength in numbers and ideological conformity. Congressional Republicans who choose to speak out against Bush are banking on the chance that the public will appreciate their honesty and bravery for acting and voting on what they feel and by not unquestionably following the president.

In most other circumstances this would be a bad decision; the other party would seize on the inherent weakness gleaned from their division and they would loose seats because of it. In the case of the Democrats, they should see these recent events as the chink in the Republican armor they?ve needed to reclaim some of their lost power.

However, as Stephanopoulos lamented of the Democrats, they are still without a strong message and a unified front to counter even today?s increasingly splintered GOP. They seem to be facing the same fragmented state of affairs the Republicans are. The only difference is the Democrats have been attempting to regroup and re-unify for years now, and the public still doesn?t feel that Democratic replacements for Republican leaders are necessarily the best solution. They still don?t have the people?s support.

Unity usually breeds public approval and for political parties disunity is right below losing public approval in the list of things they don?t want to have happen. Yet perhaps the recent party disunity on both sides is more than just conflicting politics within their own ranks. The people of the United States themselves aren?t as unified as they were in recent memory.

As time passes, ?United We Stand? is starting to mean less and less to the people as conflicting opinions take greater hold over the national consciousness. The indecisions and division within the national parties could simply be an example of this trend of change. Bickering party politicians would do good to remember that being able to disagree and to make changes is part of what makes America great. If we the people choose to disagree with our respective crowds to do what we think is right, then so be it.