So far, support from the American public for the war against Iraq has been substantial and extremely stable. About 7 in 10 Americans have consistently come down in favor of the U.S. war against Iraq since it began. Our latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll -- completed over the weekend -- shows that 70% favor U.S. involvement in the war. That's virtually the same as the 72% who supported the war the first weekend after it began.
All of this leaves me puzzled as I read the unsubstantiated comments of pundits and critics who assert that opinion on the war is somehow wildly fluctuating. An opinion piece by Walter Kirn in Sunday's New York Times Magazine ("Don't Count Me In") includes the following commentary: "The ‘numbers,' as pollsters like to call them . . . have been all over the place since the war started. It's not worth citing any particular numbers since they probably did a back flip yesterday evening depending on the news from the front lines, but the overall trend has been toward volatility and away from settledness." And, in a March 28 recounting of a Dartmouth College speech by pundit and columnist Arianna Huffington, the student newspaper, The Dartmouth, reported the following: "Huffington cited the wildly fluctuating approval rating for the war as proof that the public opinion changes every time a news story breaks."
It's unclear just exactly where Kirn, Huffington, and other critics of polls are getting their information. But the truth, as noted, is essentially exactly the opposite of what they assert.
In fact, the stability of public opinion is all the more remarkable given the enormous amount of information about the war that is flowing into the average American home via television, the Internet, newspapers, and radio.
It's true that Americans are paying close attention to the war, adjusting their estimates of its progress, probable length, and projected casualty totals depending on the information that comes back from the front. A little more than half of the public was optimistic as the war began, then optimism that the war was going "very well" fell into the 30% range in two polls conducted through the end of March. But now, buoyed by the news that U.S. troops have moved into Baghdad, the "very well" number is back up over the 50% level.
Americans are also more likely to think that the United States is certain to win the war, and estimates of how long it is going to take have become significantly more optimistic. Casualty estimates have also dropped.
But unlike Huffington's erroneous assertion, all of this reaction to the news has little-to-no impact on basic support levels for the war or for President Bush. As a matter of fact, Bush's job approval rating has shown almost no change over the last two weeks. At the beginning of the war, it was 71% (March 22-23), and was at 70% over the past weekend.
I don't anticipate much change in support levels for the war until something extremely definitive happens, and it's possible that support will hold constant even then. The public seems to have settled down into a fairly stable position on where it stands on the war.
What Happens After the War?
Inevitably, attention is beginning to turn to the post-war era. Despite their overall levels of optimism that the United States will win the war, Americans are not at all optimistic about how easy it is going to be for the United States and its allies to deal with the Iraqi situation once the fighting ends. Eighty-four percent of respondents to Gallup's weekend poll say that rebuilding Iraq and establishing a new government will be more difficult for the United States than winning the war and taking control of Iraq.
What about the president's fortune? To a certain degree, Bush's standing in the weeks and months ahead will depend on just how the military action comes to a close. A majority of Americans now tell us that the war will have been justified even if the United States does not find conclusive evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction -- good news for Bush in case that eventuality plays itself out. According to a Los Angeles Times poll released over the weekend, 67% of Americans say that Bush "gave international diplomacy enough time to work before taking military action against Iraq," suggesting that the debate about going to war versus allowing inspections to continue may have been put to rest.
Still, that same Los Angeles Times poll finds Americans more likely to believe that the United Nations should lead the reconstruction effort in Iraq, rather than the United States. This suggests possible problems if the Bush administration pushes to take on responsibility for reconstruction itself, rather than handing it over to the United Nations -- as news accounts suggest that it will.
The Economy and President Bush
The most important lurking danger for the Bush administration in the post-war era will be domestic concerns. Again and again, I remind people of the lesson that Bush the elder learned in 1991 and 1992: winning a war is no guarantee that the people will still support you a year later. President George H.W. Bush came out of the first Persian Gulf War a hero in the eyes of America; yet, within a year and a half he was in a crippled position, with his approval ratings as low as 29%. Bush's fall from grace was primarily a result of the public's perception that he was ignoring and/or wasn't able to fix the drooping economy.
The current President Bush is already in a slightly worse position than his father, with job approval ratings running about 10 points lower at this point than his father's were a couple of weeks into the first Iraq war.
I would say it's reasonable to expect that Bush is going to have problems on the economic front no matter how the war is resolved. His overall job approval ratings have risen substantially since the war began, as have his ratings on handling the Iraqi situation. But his ratings on handling the economy are about 20 points lower. Whatever legitimacy Bush may garner from his handling of the war will not necessarily be transferred to his attempts to fix the economy once the war moves off the front page.
There's also generally bad news from the American public regarding the president's beloved tax-cut plan, suggesting trouble if he relies on the tax cut as his major focus for fixing the economy in the months ahead. A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows that Americans come down in favor abandoning the tax cut because ". . . the federal budget is now in deficit and the costs of the war are unknown." A Pew Research Center for People and the Press poll shows that -- given three choices -- Americans favor postponing or reducing last year's tax cuts rather than either adding to the federal deficit or reducing spending on domestic programs.
Democrats are restraining from major criticism of Bush right now in deference to his position as a wartime president. But there is no doubt that the Democratic presidential candidates are waiting to pounce on Bush vis-à-vis the economy once the war fades from the headlines.
It's also worth noting that Bush has a real problem with support from the black population. Blacks are the less likely to support the war than any other major demographic or geographic group we analyze, and are even less supportive now than they were of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.