PRINCETON NJ -- President George W. Bush's job approval is higher than the rating for any other president over the six decades that stretch back to the beginning of The Gallup Poll in the 1930s.
Ninety percent of Americans now approve of the job Bush is doing, while only 6% disapprove. Eighty-six percent approved in the weekend after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Fifty-one percent had approved on the weekend before the attacks.
The average job approval rating given to presidents over the years has been 55% -- about where Bush had been in the months before the historic and tragic events of the 11th of September. There have been other peaks in the public's rating of presidents, sometimes extending into the 80% range, but never before has a president reached the remarkable point in a democracy where nine out of 10 of those interviewed are willing to say they approve of the way he is handling his job.
The high points in presidential job approval typically come in times of war or crisis -- times in which Americans cast aside their differences and rally behind their leaders. It was in fact Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, who received what was up to that point the highest job approval rating on record, 89%, at the end of the Persian Gulf War in late February 1991. Harry S. Truman, new to the office of the president after Franklin Roosevelt's death in April 1945, received an 87% approval rating in June of that year as a jubilant America celebrated the end of World War II in Europe. Roosevelt himself got an 84% rating in January 1942, weeks after Pearl Harbor. And even in the face of the failure that was the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in a young Kennedy administration in April 1961, JFK received an 83% approval rating from an American public intent on rallying behind its president.
These patterns are not surprising. Extreme external threats to a social system or organization often lead to internal solidarity. External threats cause re-evaluation of the usual myriad of concerns with which social systems and societies must deal and winnow them down to the most basic: survival, defense, adaptation and threat eradication. The members of a social system in a threatening situation become much more dependent on leadership and more willing to invest their leaders with trust and support in the interest of attaining the system's overarching goals.
We thus see in these times an overwhelming dropping away of the usual partisan differences that color perceptions of elected leaders. The weekend before the attacks, there was a 56-percentage-point difference between the way in which Americans who identified with the two parties rated President Bush: 83% of Republicans and 27% of Democrats said they approved of the job he was doing. Now, most of those differences have been swept away. Ninety-eight percent of Republicans and 84% of Democrats approve.
This refocusing of emotion and perception extends beyond ratings of the presidency. Americans now have higher levels of satisfaction with the way things are going in the United States than they did before -- 43% said they were satisfied the weekend before September 11 while 61% were satisfied the weekend after.
This finding is counterintuitive to some. Why do we have a sharp increase in satisfaction at a time of national crisis? After one of the most deadly days in United States' history, after an attack on American people on their own soil, after the realization that a new war has begun with indeterminate objectives and uncertain probabilities of success, it would seem to many that satisfaction would go down, not up.
It may be that the interviewer's question about satisfaction with the way things are going in the United States is interpreted by many to mean an evaluation of the way the country is handling the crisis -- the reaction, the outpouring of support, the calls to action from the nation's leaders, the pulling together. It's also possible that the events since September 11 have introduced a contrast effect. Americans may be focusing on what is good about the country, interpreting the question as a more general assessment of the American way of life, rather than a short-term analysis of the way things are going in regard to specific issues. And, there is no doubt an element of patriotism in these responses. Americans may simply want to express a positive sentiment to an interviewer, in essence saying that no attacks are going to get them down, that no attacks are going to put down the American spirit and satisfaction with the American way of life.
Finally, behind both the extraordinary increase in support for the president and the increase in expressed satisfaction with the way things are going in the country is the fundamental fact that the American public is seeking retaliation. Every poll conducted since September 11 underscores the degree to which the American public stands resolute in supporting a strong and aggressive military response and punishment for those responsible for the attacks. We looked back and found that 97% of Americans approved of the congressional decision to declare war on Japan in December 1941. The numbers are not quite so high today, but almost. About nine out of 10 Americans say yes to almost any question that is asked them about military retaliation. Indeed, those who disagree with President Bush's military reaction to the attacks are more likely to disagree because he isn't doing enough, rather than because he is doing too much.
Support for military retaliation is so strong that the possible consequences of going to war -- at this point -- clearly don't outweigh the public's determination that it is the right thing to do. Question after question in poll after poll has put in front of the American public ideas about what a real war might entail in terms of human and financial consequence. In response after response, the public perseveres in its support for retaliation. One of our Gallup polls listed 10 possible military and domestic consequences of war -- and found that at least two-thirds of respondents supported military action in response to all 10. This past weekend, we asked about the possibility of up to 5,000 military or civilian deaths resulting from military action, and found that three-quarters or more of those interviewed still supported the concept of a military response even in the face of these types of casualties.
We have a nation today that is clearly responding to an external threat so severe that the attitudinal consequences on its people have reached historic levels. The nation wants action taken and wants those responsible to be punished. The usual partisan differences in evaluation of the president have fallen away. Almost every man and woman at this point -- regardless of pre-existing political orientation -- stands behind what the president is doing. The people of the country have become more optimistic and focused. The people of this nation are, in essence, coming together for what lies ahead.