Democratic Presidential Candidates
The Democratic presidential candidates generated lots of news last week, as the beginning of the primary and caucus season in January 2004 gets closer. Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich officially announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman introduced a new tax plan that would raise taxes for the rich and lower them for the middle class, and Ret. Army Gen. Wesley Clark announced his proposal for a new Civilian Reserve that would mobilize citizen support in times of crisis.
Kucinich is a long shot at best for the nomination. He received only 3% of registered Democrats' votes in last week's latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, putting him dead last among the nine candidates included in the trial heat list.
Lieberman called for a restructuring of the tax code, including a new "tax fairness" proposal that would increase the tax rate on those in the highest income brackets and lowering the rate for the middle class. This proposal fits in quite well with the existing attitudes of Democratic voters. Indeed, Americans of all partisan orientations, most of whom do not consider themselves wealthy and make less than $100,000 a year, are predictably willing to support the idea of higher taxes on the wealthy. This is particularly true of Democrats. According to an August CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, 62% of Democrats want a Democratic nominee who would repeal only the tax cuts for the rich, but who would keep the tax cuts for the middle class.
Lieberman's proposal also takes advantage of the long-standing perception among Americans that the Republican Party -- and George Bush -- favor policies that help the rich and well-to-do.
Clark proposed the creation of a new Civilian Reserve to "tap the skills, energy, and ingenuity of ordinary Americans in times of need." This plan would encourage civilians with special skills to register with a newly created Civilian Reserve for a five-year period, ready to be mobilized to use those skills in time of crisis. This idea also would seemingly find favor with the American public, which generally approves of the concept of systems of voluntary national service. As far back as 1982, for example, a Gallup Poll found that 77% of Americans supported the concept of a system of voluntary national service for young Americans.
Bush Approval
All of these Democrats are vying for the opportunity to oppose President George W. Bush in next year's presidential election. The president, now in the fifth day of his trip to Asia, has a job approval rating that is back up above 50%. There is more encouraging news on Iraq now that the United Nations has unanimously voted in support of a U.S.-proposed resolution giving official U.N. backing to actions underway in Iraq, and better news about the direction of the economy.
Bush's campaign pollster, Matthew Dowd, was quoted this past week as saying he expected Bush's job approval ratings to remain in the 50% range between now and the election next year. Indeed, it is usually considered difficult for a president to maintain very high job approval ratings in an election year, at a time when the partisan sensibilities of voters are being activated by the intense campaigning. (Dowd, of course, has a vested interest in downplaying expectations for the president, as he has been doing all year.)
Still, Gallup has good polling history on only nine incumbent presidents who sought re-election, so generalizations are a little tricky. I think it's still best to say that almost anything can happen between now and next November, particularly based on what happens with Iraq and the domestic U.S. economy.
California Recall
Bush stopped off in California before his trip to Asia, and traded quips with governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger at a press conference. The meeting brought together the two men who are arguably the most famous political figures in the world.
Many critics derided the recall process in California, saying it could lead to a wild recall derby across the country, in which voters in state after state will elect politicians only to quickly throw them out if they don't like how they are performing. But our poll shows that 64% of Americans think it would be a good idea to have a law in their own state allowing voters to recall an elected official before his or her term in office is up. More than 6 in 10 Americans say that Schwarzenegger will be successful as governor of California, and a significant 39% of Americans outside of California say they would vote for Schwarzenegger if he were running for governor of their state.
The concern that every American now wants to throw his or her governor out of office seems to be unwarranted; the poll found that only 25% of Americans express interest in recalling their governor at this time.
The Pope
This past week marked the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's service as head of the Catholic Church, an occasion that is especially significant for the 25% Americans who are Catholic.
The pope solicits decidedly mixed reactions from these American Catholics, many of the reactions reflecting patterns we have observed for a number of years. American Catholics revere the pope personally (giving him an 88% favorability rating), but are less likely now than four years ago to approve of the job he is doing as head of the world's Catholic community (63%, as opposed to 85% in 1999). This drop in job approval may reflect a variety of factors, including the impact of the sex abuse scandal in the United States, and also a general realization among Catholics that the pope's failing health may be preventing him from performing his job as well as he has in the past.
Most American Catholics say that they would follow their own consciences rather than the pope's teachings if they were confronted by a significant moral dilemma, and less than half say they consider the pope to be infallible on moral matters. Perhaps most tellingly, 53% say that the pope is out of touch with the modern world.
Iraq
The Bush administration has mounted an offensive against what the president describes as the unduly negative way in which major news organizations have been reporting on the situation in Iraq. Last week, the Bush administration made a point of arranging interviews between the president and regional news media sources, bypassing the national news media "filter."
Gallup data certainly suggest that to some degree, the American public is receptive to the White House's criticism of the press. Our annual update on Americans' confidence in major U.S. institutions shows that newspapers and television news receive confidence ratings of just 33% and 35% -- not at the bottom of the list of institutions tested, but way below the more positively rated institutions like the military, the police, and organized religion.
Similarly, just 26% of Americans give journalists a high ethics and honesty rating, putting them well below such professions as nurses, teachers, and doctors, whose ratings are in the 60%+ range.
A recently released Fox News Opinion Dynamics poll provides further evidence for the White House's claims. The poll shows that a plurality of Americans disapprove of the way newspapers and television channels have been reporting on the U.S. military operations in Iraq, and that 6 in 10 say that the news reports have been more likely to focus on the negative things happening and leave out the positive things.
American news reports aside, Gallup's recent poll of the residents of Baghdad themselves shows a decidedly mixed picture of what is happening there. Baghdad residents clearly recognize that there are great problems in the country, and only 33% say Iraq is better off now than before the U.S. and British invasion. Baghdadis appear to be particularly concerned about security and infrastructure issues -- the same types of issues echoed by the terrorist bombings that have killed Iraqis as well as Americans. At the same time, the picture is by no means totally bleak. There are strong indications in the data that overall, Baghdadis welcomed the toppling of Saddam Hussein and think that things in Iraq will be better in the future.
Americans' approval of the job that Donald Rumsfeld is doing as Secretary of Defense is now at 58%, down from 71% in early April. There has been discussion of Rumsfeld's status vis-à-vis the White House in recent weeks, with accounts highlighting the fact that Bush did not consult with the pugnacious secretary before announcing plans to give oversight on the administration's Iraq policy to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Still, the change in Rumsfeld's approval rating is almost identical to what has happened to Bush's own approval rating, suggesting that -- so far -- the Secretary of Defense's image among Americans does not differ sharply from that of his boss.