This week marks the two-year anniversary of President George W. Bush's tenure in office. The milestone comes at a time marked by enormous uncertainties and challenges: pending war with Iraq, a possible nuclear confrontation in North Korea, an anemic national economy, and the looming prospect of an election year that begins in fewer than 12 months.
Indeed, the list of Democrats lining up to challenge the president in 2004 is growing. This past weekend found many Democratic candidates politicking in Iowa, where the first primary event of the 2004 election year is scheduled for Jan. 19, 2004. The Democrats have wasted little time in criticizing the Bush presidency, with Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri telling an Iowa audience: ''I don't think we can win this election unless we're bold and decisive and distinctive, and we lay out a path that is very different than the path that George Bush has us on."
All of this accelerated criticism of the president may be one reason why Bush's job approval ratings continue to drop closer and closer to the 55% average for all presidents since World War II. Rank-and-file Democrats have become increasingly less likely to approve of the job Bush is doing, making it a mathematical impossibility for him to score extremely highly on an overall approval measure.
A look at last year's quarter-by-quarter track of presidential approval ratings tells the story: Bush averaged 80% approval in the first quarter of 2002, 75% in the second, 68% in the third, and just 64% in the fourth quarter. Our latest approval rating for Bush is 61%, slightly higher than the 58% from our Jan. 10-12 poll, which marked the first time since Sept. 11 that the president's job rating had been below 60%.
Still, the president's image remains positive in many respects: 83% of Americans agree that Bush is willing to make hard decisions, 76% see him as a strong and decisive leader, and 68% say he has a vision for the nation's future.
The 2004 Election
No matter what Bush's approval rating is, it's far too early to handicap the 2004 race. Both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton had job approval ratings significantly below 50% in January of their third years in office, and still went on to win re-election handily. Bush's father provided the classic example of how quickly things can change; his job approval rating had risen to above 80% by the end of January of his third year in office (in the middle of the Persian Gulf War), but he fell to challenger Clinton in November 1992.
Similarly, although Sens. Joseph Lieberman and John Kerry have very modest leads over the rest of the Democratic pack in terms of winning their party's nomination, it's simply too early to determine which Democratic candidates will be left standing at their party's convention in the summer of 2004.
War in Iraq
The big unknown in the year ahead is the possibility of war. Anti-war protests took place across the country this past weekend, amid intensifying media coverage of the looming conflict between the United Nations and the United States on when and how to initiate military action against Iraq. Newspapers and television news channels have been crowded with images of soldiers, Marines, and sailors heading off to war. Many Americans are saying goodbye to fellow workers and neighbors who have been called back to active duty in the military. Company CEOs report that the possible conflict is having a major impact on their businesses, particularly as a result of the increased price of oil.
Is war inevitable? More than six in 10 Americans interviewed in a recent Pew Research poll said they believed Bush has already made up his mind to go to war with Iraq. Previous Gallup polling has shown that a majority of Americans think there will be war.
Public opinion on the war is nuanced. A majority of Americans continue to favor the concept of taking military action against Iraq "to remove Saddam Hussein from power" (56% in our latest poll). Responses to that same question were at 55% more than a decade ago, following the conclusion of the Gulf War.
But almost all polling suggests that the public is sympathetic to the position of many U.S. allies who argue for allowing inspectors more time to do their jobs, and also for holding a new U.N. vote before military action is initiated.
In our most recent Gallup Poll, 52% of Americans said that military action should wait until the U.N. inspectors find evidence of weapons of mass destruction, while just 23% said that the United States should go ahead and invade on the basis of its own evidence alone. A weekend poll by Newsweek found a majority of Americans opposed to military action if allies of the United Nations are not involved, and also found that the public wants the administration to go slow and attempt to find ways to avoid war.
By our best estimates, anywhere from a fifth to a third of the country is firmly against war in Iraq. These people tend to be Democrats and those with postgraduate educations; younger Americans are no more likely than older Americans to oppose war regardless of the circumstances under which it might occur.
North Korea
It's not just Iraq that is bothering the American public. The threat posed by North Korea's nuclear program is increasingly real to the average American. When asked in early January whether they felt Iraq or North Korea represents the greater threat to the United States, Americans chose Iraq over North Korea by a 51% to 18% margin, with the rest saying they didn't know or that the threats were equally great.
Now, those views have changed. Almost half of Americans say that the two countries pose equally dangerous threats to the United States, while 28% say Iraq is the bigger threat and 22% say it is North Korea.
The Nation's Mood
Satisfaction with the way things are going in the United States -- a basic tracking measure of the nation's mood -- has dropped to 42%, very similar to where it was just before Sept. 11, 2001, and the lowest it has been since October 1996. A year ago, 65% of Americans were satisfied with the way things were going in the country.
The prospect of war is now mentioned spontaneously by 31% of Americans as the most important problem facing the country today, an 11-point jump from last month. Terrorism is now mentioned by only 10%.
At the same time, 41% of Americans mention some aspect of the economy as the nation's top problem, underscoring the continuing importance of this issue as a top concern even as the drumbeats of war continue to sound. Our January ratings of the current U.S. economy are lower than at any point since January 1994, and more than half of Americans continue to say that the economy is getting worse, not better.
Abortion
This week marks the 30th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. A majority of Americans hold views on abortion that are generally in sync with Roe. More than half (53%) say that the Roe ruling has been a good thing for the country, while just 30% say it has been bad. Overall opinion on abortion hasn't changed materially in the last quarter-century. The majority of Americans want restrictions on abortion, but only a minority wants abortion to be made totally illegal. Abortion scores low on most of Gallup's issue-importance scales, and it hardly appears at all on the list of responses to our most important problem question.