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The NY Times adds, “The reaction comes as the rising price of gasoline has put the public in a volatile mood and as polls show that cynicism about Congress is at its highest level since 1994.” This is the broader

As our chart of the peak-to-peak parallel between Lyndon Johnson’s popularity and that of George W. Bush in this month’s issue of The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast illustrates, political sentiment appears to be out in front of the stock market. At least that’s our take on it (see entries of March 21 and February 6), and we’re sticking with it. It shouldn’t be long – at this point, the President is even making fun himself:

Bush Teams Up With Look-Alike For Laughs
President Bush and a look-alike, sound-alike sidekick poked fun at the President and fellow politicians at the White House Correspondents' Association Saturday night.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I feel chipper tonight. I survived the White House shake-up,” the President said.

The president earned points being a good sport (he’ll take them anyway he can get them these days), but the show was stolen by Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert. According to reports, Bush and the First Lady did not find the faux talk-show hosts “blistering comedy ‘tribute’” the least bit funny. “Colbert who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, ‘and reality has a well-known liberal bias.’

A burgeoning new reality was apparent in another of Colbert’s best bits. This one was directed at the media. “Let's review the rules,” said the comedian. “Here's how it works. The president makes decisions, he's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know -- fiction.”

The joke is actually a trenchant observation about social mood and the bullish environment that was in place back in 2003 when the U.S. went to war against Iraq. At that time, the president was far too popular to be scrutinized by the press. The president is now fair game because the mood is completing a 180-degree shift from up to down. Here's another anti-Bush diddy in what is fast becoming a cottage industry in Bush parodies (added May 15, 2006).

As we said back in December 1999 (see Additional References to the entry of January 21), satire appears to be one of the ways in which society pops the bubble of  mass delusion at the end of a Grand Supercycle degree bull market. For more on this, check out the next post and the video (at Dealbooks.com) focusing on the new Fed chairman by the Columbia Business School. 

October 2005, EWFF
The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast opened the year with the following comment on George Bush’s political prospects:
As the market falls in a genuine renewal of the bear market, Bush’s fortunes will fall with it. The impetus will be the same force that finally pushed Nixon out: a large-degree bear market in social mood.

For periods of time, presidential popularity can stray from the stock averages, but the fate of the nation’s chief executive always ultimately rests on the long-term trend in social mood.  At this point, Bush appears to be leading the way as his approval rating peaked in February ahead of the Dow and carried to a new low this month. The Dow has managed to resist the trend and push slightly higher from April to August, but these trends rarely diverge for long.

The larger the downtrend, the larger the political upheaval. This one is so big that political turmoil is actually getting out in front of the breakdown. According to pollsters at Zogby International, Bush’s approval rating is so low that he “Would Lose to Every Modern President.” The social scene is setting up as it did at the peak in 1968, when Lyndon Johnson’s popularity plunged so dramatically that he declined to run. Then as now, the Dow was within striking distance of a Cycle degree peak and the Value Line Geometric Average was actually at a new all-time high, one that would remain in place for the next 15 years. As then, emerging political unrest is spreading fast. Congress’ political standing is also at its lowest level since 1997. “Dark and ominous clouds are gathering over the Republican Party,” says a September 26 issue of the Washington Post. That was before Wednesday’s indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. “This is not what the Republicans envisioned 11 months ago, when they were returned to office as a powerful one-party government,” says today’s NY Times of the Republicans’ “Sea of Trouble.”

At the state and local level, populist fervor is rising. In Pennsylvania, after the state legislature voted itself a “middle of the night pay raise” in July, a wave of outrage hit the newspapers and airwaves. Since a similar whiff of fury failed to amount to anything in 1995, few Pennsylvanians “predicted the level of hostility or how long it could simmer.” “The political establishment in Harrisburg underestimated the unifying power of outrage,” said the coordinator of a September 28 protest rally. In California, politicians are scratching their heads over the emergence of “grumpy voters. As they look around them and toward the future, residents of the Golden State are turning gloomy. By a 2-to-1 margin, registered voters in California say the state’s economy is now in ‘bad times’ rather than good.” In a “stunning drop,” the approval rating of action hero turned California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is down to 31%. “The word I hear most from business people is ‘surprise’ that he has squandered so much of his political capital and their money,” said a Republican political consultant. This is nothing. Probably by the Congressional election in 2006 and certainly by the Presidential election in 2008, the electorate’s seething desire to “throw the bums out” will completely reshape the political landscape.