Another leader having a bad week is George W Bush. His approval rating is now down to 36%, with 57% saying the Iraq war was a mistake. In
voting intention for this year’s congressional elections, his
Republicans trail the Democrats by 16 percentage points, 55%-39%: according to USA Today, the largest such gap since 1992.

Democrat senator and presidential hopeful Russell Feingold has proposed a censure motion against
Bush for his approval of illegal wiretaps – the same procedure that,
with hindsight, the Republicans realised they should have used against
president Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal. The censure is not likely
to be approved, but it should provide a focus for the growing
discontent with the administration.

More unexpected criticism, however, came last week
from recently retired supreme court justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Speaking to
an audience of corporate lawyers at Georgetown University, O’Connor
attacked the Republicans for their contempt for the judiciary, and for
apparently condoning violence against judges whose rulings they
disagree with.

As reported by National Public Radio, “O’Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would
strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It
takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship,
she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.”

O’Connor’s critique would carry more weight if it
was accompanied by some sort of apology. In the 2000 case of Bush v
Gore, she was the swing vote that made Bush president: by a 5-4
majority, the supreme court abandoned its federalist principles and
prevented Florida from conducting a recount in the disputed election
that, as we now know, would have given it to Al Gore. She will probably
be remembered for that long after her defence of judicial independence
has been forgotten.