Our unit on perilous times has made me look at the dire economic and war related struggles of our country and ask, who does the public turn to in a period of trouble? Do they always look to their current leader, or do they toss him/her away? Our current president has seen his fair share of perilous times, but it is interesting to look at the different reactions of the public depending on the type of situation.
Right after the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centers president Bush's approval ratings had gone through the roof. The country looked to their leader and followed his very word, condemning those responsible for the attacks and following the president to war. The same war that many people supported then is still going on, but now the outlook has changed. The country has fallen into an economic slump, and the general consensus is that we are on the wrong track. The same leader that was supported so fervently back in 2001 is now looked upon with distrust and anger by significant percentage of the population. Why is it that in certain times of peril, a country will support its leader, and in others, they will push him away?
I think that the answer lies in the question of responsibility. When the cause of the trouble at hand comes from an outside factor, the country pools together and fights it. They turn to their leader to direct them into the unknown and deal with those who are responsible for the trouble that was caused. On the other hand, when the problem is internal, and the country feels like it is an internal factor that is causing the problem, they will turn on each other and their leader, causing a split instead of a union. While both perilous times, the two situations either unite or divide a group.
In the 2004 presidential elections, President Bush, who led us into the Iraq war was reinstated to finish the job. In the course of American history, no President that started a war was voted out of their second term. This goes back to the idea that external factors will create a tendency for Americans to look to their president for help. Now, however, few people are looking to Bush to help them with our economic slump, they don't rally together to solve the situation for they know that the troubles have less to do with factors outside the country as their own leadership.
At one time, he is seen as a valiant leader in a time of war, and another he is looked upon with contempt. One cannot say that in perilous times a country will always look to it's leader because it is completely dependent on the situation. If the leader is at all blamed for the trouble at hand, as opposed to an enemy unseen by the public, he is not given the chance to right his wrongs. The public will look for someone else to take his place.
1 comment:
I agree with you completely on what you said about internal and external factors. It is just funny to me that during the course of reading your blog I realized something about people in perilous times. The verdict is and has been that somebody needs to be blamed for an event that puts people in terror. Not once have we looked upon ourselves and blamed ourselves for our own mess, and when we do realize that is when we blame our leaders. We use our president and our government as an excuse for mistakes we make just as big as all the people in the white house.
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