Majority of Americans Don't Approve of Job Bush is Doing, Say War Was a Mistake.

I still suspect that Bush will win against Kerry.

 

Well, since I am not a voter, I prefer a neutral wording. I just think Bush will win...

 

MacBeth,

I'll be the first to admit that I haven't been a regular in the D&D forum, so hopefully you and some others can answer this for me:

Do you want Kerry to win because he is the best candidate or would you have voted for anyone other than Bush?

 

Fair enough.

Did you think Gore would have made a good or better president (at the time)?

 

do you have a link to this story??? i'd like to be able to just send the link to my business partner via email.

 

The majority of Americans don't approve of the job Bush is doing, yet he is still beating Kerry?


Way to run a great campaign, John.

How pathetic.

 

i think that's the problem...i would love an alternative, but i'm not convinced we're gonna get anything better out of Kerry than what we've gotten from Bush.

i'm voting for Major!! seriously...he's even-tempered...intelligent...and just a good guy. Major for president.

 

Max, this is the Times version of the same story... perhaps with more analysis:

May 14, 2004

Polls Show Bush's Job-Approval Ratings Sinking

By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, May 13 - As President Bush was traveling through the Midwest on his exuberant bus tour last week, his campaign aides still sounded confident that the revelations of how Iraqi prisoners were abused would do far more harm to the United States' image abroad than to the president's standing at home.

But only a week later, at the very moment Mr. Bush's aides had hoped to be basking in the glow of improving economic numbers, months of setbacks in Iraq are clearly taking their toll.

Mr. Bush's job-approval numbers have sunk to all-time lows, with a majority of Americans now saying, for the first time, that the invasion of Iraq was not worth the mounting cost. At the same time, they give the president far higher marks for his execution of the battle against terrorists, even though he has argued that they are all part of one war.

Congress, including prominent conservatives, has grown so restive about the wisdom of Mr. Bush's strategy that on Thursday the deputy secretary of defense, Paul D. Wolfowitz, had to retreat from a Senate hearing when members of both parties demanded far more specifics than he could provide about plans for spending the $25 billion the president is seeking to pursue the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And for the first time, even some of the most loyal administration aides, who have regularly defended every twist in the Iraq strategy, are conceding that the president and his top advisers are stuck in what one of them called "the perpetual debate" about whether to change strategy or soldier on. Mr. Bush's usually sunny campaign advisers make no effort to hide the depth of the problem.

"Look, obviously events and the coverage and what's reported are going to have an effect on how people see the direction of the country," said Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for Bush-Cheney '04. "In the last two months or three months, there hasn't been a wealth of positive news. It was bound to have an effect, and we expected that."

But Mr. Dowd said that changing Mr. Bush's tone on the campaign trail was not an option. So with some modifications, Mr. Bush is following the script he and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, drafted as the prisoner scandal emerged: He repeats his disgust with the abuses, then turns the subject immediately back to his broader goals in the war on terrorism, merging it with the action in Iraq. He did so again on Thursday in a West Virginia school gymnasium.

"We're being tested," Mr. Bush said. "People are testing our mettle. And I will not yield to the whims of the few."

After vigorous applause, he added, "I won't yield because I believe so strongly in what we're doing, and I have faith in the power of freedom to spread its wings in parts of the world that desperately need freedom."

Several of Mr. Bush's advisers have said in recent weeks that they believe the bigger mistake for the president would be to show any weakness, or to yield even to those in his own party who may not want to cut and run, but may be interested in moving quickly to the exits after June 30.

And so far, he is under relatively little pressure from his Democratic opponent in the presidential race, Senator John Kerry, to make a major course correction. Mr. Kerry called months ago for greater United Nations participation; for the last few months, Mr. Bush has done the same. And while Mr. Kerry harshly criticized the president on the prison scandal on Wednesday, he has said that a withdrawal from Iraq would be disastrous, and on Thursday he even endorsed, without qualification, Mr. Bush's request for the $25 billion in additional financing.

"The situation in Iraq has deteriorated far beyond what the administration anticipated," Mr. Kerry said in a statement meant to pre-empt any questions about whether he would hedge his support for the additional money, as he did on a larger request last year. "This money is urgently needed, and it is completely focused on the needs of our troops. We must give our troops the equipment and support to carry out their missions in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Mr. Bush's advisers say they have been surprised that their own candidate's decline in the polls has not resulted in an equivalent boost for Mr. Kerry. But several members of Mr. Bush's foreign policy team noted Mr. Kerry's new line of attack on Wednesday, when he said that Mr. Bush's aides "dismiss the Geneva Conventions, starting in Afghanistan and Guantánamo, so that the status of prisoners both legal and moral becomes ambiguous at best."

Some Republicans close to Mr. Bush's campaign are concerned that Mr. Kerry's comments are the beginning of a new effort to fuel the notion that Mr. Bush's take-no-prisoners attitude created the conditions that allowed prisoner abuses to flourish.

"No one in the White House knows if that argument will stick," said one conservative who met with Mr. Bush's aides this week. "Clearly, it worries them. And it should."

Asked about the state of the presidential race on Thursday as he flew back to Washington from Little Rock, Ark., Mr. Kerry was upbeat. Saying there was much work yet to be done, he added, "I'd rather be where we are, growing, than where they are."

The polls out this week found Mr. Bush, by some measures, at the lowest point of his presidency. Only 46 percent of Americans told the Gallup Poll they approved of the way Mr. Bush was handling his job, and a majority, 51 percent, said they disapproved. Other polls had similar results. A poll by the Pew Research Center found that 44 percent of Americans approved of the president's handling of his job and 48 percent disapproved.

Those numbers alarm many of Mr. Bush's supporters, but Mr. Dowd said: "I always counsel people when we are ahead and behind that since this country is very divided, this thing is always going to be played by the 45-yard lines. And we are still in that place."

Perhaps most alarming for Mr. Bush is the public's assessment that things in the United States are not going particularly well, with only 33 percent of the respondents in the Pew poll saying they were satisfied with the way things were going in the country and 61 percent saying they were dissatisfied.

All this comes at a time when the public's support for the war in Iraq is rapidly fading. For the first time since the war began, a majority of respondents in the Gallup poll, 54 percent, said it was not worth going to war in Iraq; 44 percent said it was worth it.

Only 41 percent said they approved of the way Mr. Bush was handling the situation in Iraq, while nearly 6 in 10, or 58 percent, said they disapproved.

Still, despite the failure to find unconventional weapons and the failure to anticipate the rising insurgency, a majority said it was not a mistake to send troops to Iraq in the first place, a critical argument in Mr. Bush's stump speech.

The polls were taken before the beheading of Nicholas E. Berg was made public. The Gallup poll of 1,003 adults was conducted May 7-9; the Pew, of 1,800 adults, was conducted May 3-9. Each poll was conducted nationwide by telephone and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/14/p...l=1&adxnnlx=1084561755-eR3iDYvWQ0Z/m9jX2swPqQ

 

actually, it's easy to not approve of the job bush is doing, but not support kerry. many of us feel W should be more ruthless in iRaq, that calling the marines off in fallujah for example was a mistake, just to take one example.

 

From the Washington Post...


washingtonpost.com > Politics > Elections > 2004 Election

Analysis
Bad Signs For Bush In History, Numbers
Approval Rating Is Lowest of His Term
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 14, 2004; Page A01

Six months before the November election, President Bush has slipped into a politically fragile position that has put his reelection at risk, with the public clearly disaffected by his handling of the two biggest issues facing the country: Iraq and the economy.

Bush continues to run a close race against Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in national polls, and his reelection committee has spent prodigiously to put Kerry on the defensive in the opening phase of the campaign, with some success. But other indicators -- presidential approval being the most significant -- suggest Bush is weaker now than at any point in his presidency.

Bush's approval rating in the Gallup poll fell to 46 percent this week -- the lowest in his presidency by that organization's measures. Fifty-one percent said they disapprove -- the first time in his presidency that a bare majority registered disapproval of the way Bush is doing his job. A Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday pegged Bush's approval at 44 percent, with 48 percent disapproving.

In contrast, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, who were reelected easily, had approval ratings in the mid-50s at this point in their reelection campaigns and remained at or above those levels into November. But Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter had fallen to about 40 percent in their approval ratings at this point in their races and, after continuing to fall even further, lost their reelection bids.

Given the volatility of events, the amount of time before Election Day and hurdles Kerry must overcome, Bush has plenty of time to recover. His advisers said that they recognize the weakness in the president's current standing but that he is far more resilient politically than his detractors suggest. They also argue that in this climate, perceptions of Kerry will be just as important as perceptions of the incumbent, and they have poured tens of millions of dollars into television ads attacking Kerry as a politician lacking clear convictions.

Frank Newport of the Gallup Organization pointed out that, in Gallup's surveys, no president since World War II has won reelection after falling below 50 percent approval at this point in an election year. "Looking at it in context, Bush is following the trajectory of the three incumbents who ended up losing rather than the trajectory of the five incumbents who won," he said.

But Newport was quick to add that history may be an uncertain guide, given the volatility of events in Iraq. "There is the potential for this to be a disruptive year that doesn't follow historical patterns," he said.

This president's problems are linked directly to deteriorating perceptions of how he is dealing with Iraq and the economy. A solid majority of Americans now disapprove of his handling of both. As a result, his overall approval rating has declined. But Bush's advisers said his standing in October, not May, is what counts.

Matthew Dowd, senior adviser for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said Bush occupies a unique position compared with former presidents. In past campaigns, Bush's predecessors have either been above 53 percent in approval by the time of the election and been reelected, or have been below 46 percent and been defeated.

"We're in that place where no presidential reelection campaign has ever been," he said. "People say this is a referendum on the president. It's both a referendum on the president but also a referendum on the alternative."

At this point in the race, strategists in both parties said, a president's approval rating may be a clearer and more reliable measure of where the contest stands than head-to-head matchups with the other party's candidate. They say the public first makes a judgment about the incumbent and then looks more seriously at the challenger.

Douglas Sosnik, White House political director during Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, told the Democratic Leadership Council meeting in Phoenix last week that an incumbent's eventual vote is linked more directly to his approval rating than to any other measure and thus serves as a leading indicator early in the race. Dowd, too, has said repeatedly that the president's eventual vote percentage will track closely with his approval rating.

Sosnik argued that the danger for Bush is that negative perceptions of his performance could harden over the next 90 days, and that even improvements on the ground in Iraq or in the economy will not save him by that point in the campaign.

But Sosnik said yesterday that the extraordinary uncertainty that surrounds the campaign could render historical patterns moot. "Perhaps we are in a new era in politics where the lessons of history no longer apply," he said in an e-mail message. "Based on President Bush's current job approval rating, he had better hope so."

Bush ended 2003 on a sharp spike of support after the capture of Saddam Hussein and hit 64 percent approval in mid-December. But that brief period of rallying behind the president lasted for only a month, and by mid-January his approval rating had fallen to 53 percent in the Gallup poll. He remained in the low-50s throughout the first months of the year, but in the past month, as the violence in Iraq increased and then the scandal over prisoner abuse hit with full force, his standing fell again.

A senior Bush adviser, who asked not to be identified in order to speak openly about the campaign, said: "This is a response to current affairs. When there are difficulties in the world, an incumbent by definition has a short-term hit on his numbers." But he predicted that the closeness of the race only raises the stakes on Kerry to make himself acceptable to voters.

Kerry advisers dispute the GOP view that Bush's approval numbers can easily rebound, arguing that, in a divided nation, he will struggle to get above 50 percent. "I think what you see is a 50 percent president, with that 50 percent being punctured by events," Kerry pollster Mark Mellman said.

He noted that Bush saw his approval ratings soar after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and again when the United States went to war against Iraq. But over time, he said, those numbers receded. "It's very hard to see where the natural line is here because it's almost always sloped as a result of some event," he said. "But I don't think there's anything to suggest there's a natural place for this president to be anything more than 50 percent."

Sour attitudes about the country's direction also are hurting the president, and analysts such as Sosnik said that measure, too, is a leading indicator of the political mood. But Republican pollster Bill McInturff said presidents can win reelection even if a majority of voters say the country is heading in the wrong direction, as they do now. He said he believes the public's mood will brighten if Iraq ceases to dominate the news as it has for the past month.

"Obviously as a campaign we would prefer to be above 50 [percent] than below 50, but you play the cards you're dealt," Dowd said. "Nothing Senator Kerry is doing is affecting our numbers. It's events in the world and how people view the situation in the world or the situation in Iraq."


© 2004 The Washington Post Company


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25367-2004May13.html

 

HEARTS AND MINDS, MOTHERF-KERS!
OR WE'LL CUT YOUR HEART OUT AND BLOW YOUR HEADS OFF!

Read Wesley Clark's article that rimrocker posted.

 

I think ole Wes believes what he wants to believe...

 

ah...

so it's not about bring democracy to Iraq anymore...

interesting...

 

ardyhay-arhay-arhay

 

those who approve of bush's handling of terrorism are the same people who think throwing gasoline on a fire is the way to put it out.