by Alexis Simendinger of the National Journal
President Bush is a scenery-chewing, tyranny-taunting, third-rail-hugging chief executive who won a second term in part by flaunting his testosterone. Men tell pollsters that they like Bush, and in 2004, the president was happy to find that married women flocked to his Lone Star leadership style.
But in a jam -- which is pretty much how the second term is starting out -- the president senses some gender slippage and is not averse to employing the women in his life. He's not a girlie man, clearly, but a man who knows how to use the girls. Just six months ago, Bush turned to security and leadership themes to win 48 percent of the women's vote, besting his performance in 2000 by 5 points.
Against the backdrop of a deadly Iraq, Washington's intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, an iffy Social Security campaign, and the wallet-tightening climb of a gallon of gas and a gallon of milk to the same $2.50 price level, the president is losing support among women. On every issue, the Gallup Organization found in an April 30 to May 1 survey, women are more disapproving of Bush's performance in office than are men.
Fifty-four percent of women frown on Bush's overall performance, while 53 percent of men applaud him. Women, who now have a generally more pessimistic outlook about the economy than men, disapprove of Bush's handling of the economy by 59 percent; men are split at 48 percent approval and 48 percent disapproval. Both men and women give Bush low marks for his handling of gas prices, but women are more critical: 73 percent of women disapprove of how he has handled prices at the pump, compared with 60 percent of men.
On Bush's handling of foreign affairs, 54 percent of women are unimpressed, while men favor Bush by 52 percent. Thinking specifically about his handling of Iraq, 63 percent of women give the president low marks, while a majority of men -- 51 percent -- say they approve of Bush's handling of Iraq.
After barnstorming the country trying to create support for his Social Security ideas, the president has found only minority backing among both genders, but the disapproval among women is more acute: 65 percent, compared with 50 percent disapproval among men, according to Gallup. (A month after his re-election, half of women thought that Bush's Social Security personal investment accounts were a good idea, but by February, that support had plummeted by 8 points, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. And among women over 50, the drop-off of support was a more dramatic 11 points, Pew found.)
So, it's entirely understandable that the leader of the free world last Saturday night ceded his microphone at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner to Laura Bush, the most popular figure on his team. With an angelic smile and a flick of her chiffon-bedecked arm to direct her husband to return to his seat, the first lady commiserated with married women everywhere about her "George." He's asleep while the night is young; he abandons her to the tube; he's overly fond of power tools; he was more Oliver Wendell Douglas (of Green Acres fame) than John Wayne as an outdoorsman; and his mother is a forbidding meddler. It's not just that women laughed and could relate to Laura; they could warm to the foibles of her spouse.
And speaking of his mother, Barbara Bush has been part of the president's vaudeville act for years. Women enjoy hearing the president's yarns about the Bush family matriarch, who brings the powerful to heel. So when the president was in the Sunshine State in March, struggling to persuade seniors that he is not trying to snatch away their monthly Social Security checks, he trotted out his dear old ma to make the sale. "If you would listen, I'd tell you more," Barbara admonished her tongue-tied son as she backed his efforts.
On the foreign-affairs front, Bush relies on battle-hardened women as his scouts. In February, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, one of the president's closest confidants, donned stiletto boots and a black, slit-up-to-there brass-buttoned coat in Germany to send the message that Bush would wow the leaders of "old Europe" with kisses on both cheeks.
As Rice seeks to soothe foreign leaders fed up with American bullying, the president tasked his former counselor, Karen Hughes, to improve America's image. Bush's thinking is that since Hughes, who is working from a State Department post, managed his communications in Texas, guided him through 2000's rugged election -- and through the tumult of 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- she's the gal who can sell the Stars and Stripes in hostile parts of the globe.
When it comes to female rescuers, the president is even brazen enough to wield his fluffy new puppy, Miss Beazley, as a shield. The morning after his East Room news conference last week, a reporter asked about Social Security during a North Lawn tree-planting event that included the presidential canines. Ignoring his interrogators, Bush trained all of his attention on his petite Scottish terrier. "C'mon, Beaz," he said twice as the cameras clicked.
