Iraq
News from Iraq has been dominated by reports of U.S. soldiers' alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners, as well as coverage of the continuing deaths of U.S. soldiers. Both of these events unfold against the backdrop of Iraqi attitudes that are strongly negative toward the United States and the current occupation of Iraq by American military forces.
According to the late March/early April Gallup Poll of Iraq, almost 6 in 10 Iraqis (58%) feel that U.S. troops have conducted themselves badly in that country, including 29% who say "very badly." Eighty-one percent of Baghdad residents say that U.S. forces in Iraq have conducted themselves badly, marking a significant increase compared with the results from Gallup's 2003 Poll of Baghdad, when just 29% felt this way.
In other words, there has been a dramatic change in attitudes toward U.S. troops during the last seven months. Coupled with data showing that 71% of Iraqis see U.S. forces mainly as occupiers, not liberators, and that a majority of Iraqis want coalition troops to leave immediately, one is left with the strong suggestion that the recent images of alleged atrocities by U.S. troops will further inflame what is already a highly inflammatory situation.
It is also important to keep in mind that there is a great deal of general frustration on the part of Iraqis. Overwhelming majorities report having gone without electricity, standing in line to get gasoline, and feeling afraid to go outside their homes at night. Only a little more than a third of Iraqis (37%) believe that the United States is serious about wanting to establish a democracy and improving the economic lot of the Iraqis. Only 23% have a favorable view of the United States, and only 24% have a favorable view of George W. Bush.
Thus, these survey findings may be resulting in part from a displacement process, in which the Iraqis are taking out their frustration over the problems they are encountering in their daily lives on the most convenient target -- the U.S. occupiers.
All in all, it appears that the problems in Iraq that are causing these negative attitudes might not be so much the result of a lack of vision on the part of the Bush administration. Rather, the problem could be more a result of issues relating to execution, which the authors Ram Charan, Charles Burck, and Larry Bossidy in their best-selling management book contend is the key to business success.
Even if the initial strategy in Iraq was good, the tactics that followed have not been well-executed. It is hard for even the most partisan Republican observer to make a case that the Bush administration has been extraordinarily successful in following through on the plans to move Iraq quickly to an economically viable democracy. The devil is in the details, and the details of the occupation seem to have gone seriously awry.
This failure may be surprising given the high level of managerial talent in Bush's White House, including a Harvard MBA (Bush), former CEOs of major corporations (Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld), and a former four-star general in the U.S. Army (Colin Powell).
Things may certainly change for the better, but for the moment, both the Iraqi and American publics' perceptions of a solid return on investment in Iraq are not strong.
Bush vs. Kerry
Yet, the president holds on. Bush's poll numbers are neither rising up into strongly positive territory, nor are they sinking into the quicksand of opprobrium.
Bush's job approval rating is averaging right at the 50% mark (although the rating dropped as low as 46% in a recent CBS News/New York Times poll). And most polls show that he and John Kerry remain close in presidential trial heats.
Kerry's inability to take advantage of Bush's perceived difficulties in Iraq is all the more puzzling given what continues to be a less-than-robust U.S. economy -- usually a key indicator of an incumbent's strength. Many of Gallup's basic measures of Americans' views of the economy have yet to pick up after dropping off since January. The April UBS/Gallup Index of Investor Optimism, released last week, shows a drop in investor optimism -- not a major drop, but a drop nevertheless. And the rise in gas prices, a potentially explosive concern for the American public, shows no signs of abating.
There is an oft-mentioned perception that Kerry is somehow "unlikable," but it's hard to find survey evidence supporting that conclusion. The latest Gallup Poll shows that Kerry's favorable and unfavorable ratings are virtually the same as those of Bush.
Similarly, the results from an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in late April found that neither Bush nor Kerry has a strong edge over the other on a series of personality dimensions tested in the poll. Kerry is only slightly more likely than Bush to be perceived as having "a boring personality." Bush was actually a little more likely than Kerry to sometimes be seen as "cold and distant." Bush beat Kerry by only a few points on being "caring and compassionate," and "a 'people person.'"
Brown v. Board of Education
May 17 marks the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's historic Brown v. Board of Education decision, which unanimously declared that separate educational facilities for black children were inherently unequal and in violation of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
There is no question that much has changed since that day. In fact, 77% of blacks interviewed in a recent series of Gallup Polls agree that educational opportunities for black children are better today than they were 50 years ago. But the poll also shows that black Americans today are by no means convinced that race problems in education have been cured. Only 31% of blacks feel that black children have equal educational opportunities as white children, while 68% do not.
The attitudes of whites are essentially the opposite: 63% say that black children do have equally educational opportunities, while 34% say they do not.
Racial inequality in education is one of the most complex public policy issues facing the nation today. There is no doubt that many of the formal segregationist barriers that faced black children in the 1950s are gone. Yet black children continue to score substantially lower on standardized testing than do white children, and rates of college attendance, college graduation, and economic success for blacks remain significantly behind those of whites.
There are a whole host of theories as to why this is the case, as well as many suggested solutions to ameliorate the situation. Blacks themselves tell Gallup that the four most important ways to improve educational opportunities for black children in the United States today would be to: 1) make sure that the same standards of opportunity are provided for black children and white children; 2) provide better teachers for black children; 3) provide better funding and financing for black schools; and 4) do a better job of encouraging black children to attend school.
Guns
Mother's Day will bring not only a celebration of the nation's mothers, but also the Million Mom March Against Guns. By Gallup's latest estimate, 43% of Americans have guns in their homes, while at the same time 60% of the public would like to see laws covering the sale of firearms made more strict than they are today. A strong majority supports keeping restrictions on assault weapons, one of the main causes advocated by the Million Mom March.
Interestingly, the percentage of Americans who support stricter firearms sale laws dropped significantly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but has now climbed back up to where it was in the late 1990s and 2000.
Retirement
Americans today worry a great deal about having enough money for retirement -- more than they worry about financial problems such as paying bills, unexpected healthcare costs, or making minimum credit card payments. In fact, only 59% of those who are not retired believe that they will have enough money to retire comfortably according to an April 2004 Gallup Poll.
This anxiety about retirement is to some degree irrational, at least based on what is actually the case among retirees today. Older Americans who have already retired are in fact getting along quite nicely. There is a serious discrepancy between the perception of what is looming ahead in retirement years, and what is actually the case for those who have already reached that point in their lives.
A lot of this worry has to do with Social Security. Those of us still working have been inculcated with the idea that the old mainstay of retirement income, Social Security, is not something we are going to be able to rely on. Our poll shows that only 25% of non-retired Americans think that Social Security will be a major source of income when they do retire. Today's workers are much more likely to believe that 401(k)s and IRAs will be the mainstay of their retirement funding.
This projection is 180 degrees different from what today's retirees tell us about their incomes. Fifty-five percent of retirees say Social Security is a major source of income in their retirement years, higher than any other source we measured. Only a paltry 20% of retirees today rely on 401(k)s and IRAs as a major source of income.