Iraq and al Qaeda
Over the past several days, there has been a continuing focus on the precise nature of the connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. President George W. Bush used that connection as one of the rationales for the war against Iraq, but last week's reports from the Sept. 11 Commission downplayed the seriousness of that connection, presenting an obvious challenge to the administration.
Not surprisingly, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other administration surrogates quickly swung into action in an attempt to dilute the report's impact. Cheney, in particular, attempted to turn the focus onto the media, claiming that the New York Times and other news outlets have distorted the commission's reporting.
The actual facts surrounding the issue are quite murky. The commission's report acknowledges that there was some contact between Iraq and al Qaeda, but asserts that there is no evidence that Iraq was directly involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The average American has no way of determining the precise nature of any contact between shadowy al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials over the last decade. Rather, Americans' perceptions on this topic are based almost exclusively on what authoritative sources -- primarily the Bush administration -- have told them. Thus, polling on the issue serves as a way of measuring the extent to which various messages have filtered through and been accepted by the public.
The available data suggest that Americans -- perhaps because of predispositions to believe almost anything bad about Hussein -- have been quite receptive to the idea that there were strong ties between Iraq and al Qaeda.
A CBS News/New York Times poll conducted on April 23-27, 2004, found that 39% of Americans believed Hussein was "personally involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." That's slightly lower than the 53% who felt that way in December, when Gallup last asked this same type of question.
In a late January/early February 2004 poll, Gallup found that 31% of Americans were "certain" that "Iraq had ties to Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization known as al Qaeda before the war." Another 43% thought that such ties were likely, although not certain.
More recently, a Harris Interactive telephone poll conducted June 8-15 found that 69% of Americans agree that, "Saddam Hussein was supporting the terrorist organization al Qaeda, which attacked the United States on September 11, 2001."
Thus, it appears that the Bush administration's contention that there were connections between Iraq and al Qaeda is believable to many Americans. This finding in turn suggests that the Sept. 11 Commission reports on this issue may not do as much damage to the Bush re-election effort as some may have thought.
The Election
As I've stressed before, John Kerry has three major opportunities between now and Nov. 2 to make or break his case to the American public. The first will be Kerry's announcement of his vice-presidential running mate, which will most likely come in the first two weeks of July. Then, Kerry will dominate the news the week of July 26 as his party holds its convention in Boston. Finally, there are the three presidential debates scheduled for Sept. 30, Oct. 8, and Oct. 13.
The biggest opportunity for Kerry will be the Democratic Convention. History dictates that there will be a "bounce" in Kerry's position immediately after the convention. Conventions resulting in the highest bounce for the candidate are typically those that come first, those that belong to the challenger, and those belonging to the Democrats. Thus, the odds are that Kerry's bounce will be significant.
On the other hand, Bush has long planned on making the late August/early September GOP convention in New York City a masterful kickoff to the fall campaign. But incumbents have a harder time producing real change at their conventions, in large part because Americans are already so used to seeing an incumbent making speeches and appearing in ceremonial settings.
Thus, the polling measures for the rest of the campaign season that will be most important to monitor will include the size of the Kerry bounce after his convention, Kerry's ability to sustain that bounce through August (when television will be dominated by the Olympics in Athens), the size of the Bush bounce, and exactly where the race stands after the Labor Day weekend.
Indeed, I believe that the post-Labor Day polls will be among the most critically important indicators of this campaign. If Kerry is tied or has a lead at that point, things will look good for his election. If Bush comes out of his convention with a lead, then Kerry's chances are certainly much weaker.
Bill Clinton
By now, most Americans are probably aware that former President Bill Clinton's memoir is being published Tuesday. He appeared on 60 Minutes, he will be on Oprah Tuesday, and he will make the rounds on morning network talk shows later in the week. Excerpts from the book form the cover story of this week's TIME magazine, reviews have been published in major newspapers, and excerpts are being read on radio stations across the country.
Clinton averaged a 55% job approval rating while he was president -- almost exactly average for all presidents Gallup has measured since World War II. But that average rating -- spread across eight years -- conceals a pattern of fascinating change. Clinton's job approval ratings were low in his first years in office as he battled economic woes, a failed healthcare initiative, controversies about gays in the military, and the rumors of $200 haircuts in Los Angeles. His high points came during his final year in office, particularly in and around the time of his impeachment.
Why did Clinton's job approval rating go up, not down, as revelations of his affair with Monica Lewinsky and his subsequent impeachment and trial in the Senate dominated the news? Probably the best explanation has to do with a contrast effect. It is likely that the more Americans focused on Clinton's moral failings, the more they also focused on what was going right in the country. In the fall of 1998, during the impeachment period, 60% of Americans were satisfied with the way things were going in the United States and 56% rated the economy as "excellent" or "good" -- both far above the current 39% who are satisfied with the way things are going and the 35% who rate the economy as excellent or good.
Big Business
Reports over the weekend suggested that Ken Lay, former chairman of Enron Corp., may be indicted for his role in his company's financial malfeasance. Have the activities of Lay and executives at WorldCom, Tyco, Martha Stewart, ImClone, and Adelphia seriously damaged the public's image of big business?
My response is simple -- no. The image of big business was so bad already that there simply wasn't much more damage left to do. Americans have been subjected to reports of big business scandals and abuses for all of their lives. For as long as Gallup has been measuring them, public perceptions of big business have been at the negative end of the scale. In many ways, it appears that Americans have come to expect that the people running big corporations are neither honest nor ethical. Enron and its contemporaries have simply confirmed these pre-existing beliefs.
Only 24% of Americans have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in big business, according to a May 2004 Gallup Poll. When Gallup started measuring confidence levels in big business in May 1973, that percentage was almost exactly the same, at 26%.
There have been a few fluctuations over the last 30 years. The current level of confidence in big business is a smidgen higher than the absolute low point of 20% -- measured in 1981 and again in June 2002. I'm not sure why confidence in business was so low in 1981, just about a year after Ronald Reagan took office, but we all know that 2002 -- when Enron, WorldCom, and other big business scandals dominated the news -- was not a good year for business by any means.
To be sure, the June 2002 low point for confidence in big business represented a modest falloff from the "height" of business confidence that occurred in the late 1990s. But even in the middle of that economic boom, only 30% of Americans at the most said they had high confidence in big business in 1998 and 1999.
Not surprisingly, big business does not stack up well against other major American institutions. The military is at the top of Gallup's confidence list, with a 75% confidence rating from the public. Other institutions that generate high confidence ratings are the police and organized religion (although confidence in the church dropped fairly precipitously in 2002 after the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals).
There are a few rays of hope for business. Banks are reasonably well situated with a 53% confidence rating -- more than twice as high as confidence in big business more generally. And past Gallup Polls have shown that "small" business gets much higher confidence ratings than "big" business.
Politicians
Monday's announcement that Connecticut Gov. John Rowland has resigned, rather than face questioning in an impeachment inquiry over allegations that Rowland engaged in various corrupt practices, will do nothing to help the reputation of American politicians. But, as is the case for big business, there is little room for politicians' reputations to fall further. According to a November 2003 Gallup Poll, only 26% of Americans give state governors a high or very high honesty and ethics rating, putting them near the bottom of the list. The only redeeming factor for governors: They have higher honesty ratings than either senators (20%) or congressmen (17%). All of these politicians, by the way, have higher honesty ratings than car salesmen, who are seen as having high honesty and ethical standards by only 7% of Americans.