The former Republican president is blamed more than President Barack Obama for the budget deficit, unemployment and illegal immigration, according to a Bloomberg National Poll conducted July 9-12.
Most surprising is that 60 percent say Bush is primarily responsible for the current situation in Afghanistan.
Asked to compare Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina with Obama’s handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, 51 percent say Bush’s performance was worse, while 35 percent name Obama. Republicans are more likely to pan Obama’s performance on the oil spill, with 69 percent saying he did worse than Bush
More blame Bush than Obama for the federal deficit, 32 percent to 24 percent. Among Republicans, 39 percent say Obama is to blame, while about a quarter of independents hold that view.
Bush was there for eight years and everything just kept getting worse,” says poll participant Kelly Redding, 31, an independent voter from Columbus, Ohio. “Obama can’t perform miracles overnight.”
Jeremy Dawson, 31, who has served three tours in Iraq, is among those who blame Bush more than Obama for some of the nation’s biggest problems.
“He focused so much on Iraq and Afghanistan and not enough on America,” says Dawson, who votes as an independent. “There was little or nothing being done in this country.”
“The public remembers the Bush years as a tumultuous time of costly wars, and the years when a budget surplus became a deficit,” said J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., a Des Moines, Iowa-based firm that conducted the survey.
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