August
29, 2002 10:15 a.m. Bush’s
So-Called Friends
The
president loses support he never really had.
hat's
behind George W. Bush's declining job-approval rating, which, having once
hit 90 percent, now stands at 65 percent in the latest Gallup poll? Is
he losing favor among long-time supporters? Is he losing the support of
people who didn't approve of him before September 11 but were won over
by his handling of the war on terrorism? Or is he losing the support of
people who never really approved of him but who, for a time after September
11, told pollsters that they did?
A look at more than
three dozen Gallup opinion surveys taken since September 11 suggests the
last answer is correct. Bush's decline is entirely attributable to the
number of Democrats, and some independents, who said they approved of
his performance in the months after September 11 but now say they no longer
approve.
First, Bush's long-time
friends. Republican support for Bush did not skyrocket after September
11 — it could not — because it was already high. In a poll taken
between September 7 and September 10 of last year, Gallup found that 87
percent of Republicans approved of Bush's job performance. Immediately
after the attacks in New York and Washington, that number jumped to 95
percent. In early November, it rose to 99 percent, and it has never fallen
below 90 percent. In the latest poll, it is 94 percent. Even among those
who would be expected to support him most strongly, Bush's numbers are
impressive.
Now look at Democrats.
In the last pre-September 11 poll, just 27 percent of Democrats said they
approved of Bush's job performance. Immediately after the attacks, that
number jumped to 78 percent, and then, in late September, to 84 percent.
That was the highest Bush ever scored among Democrats, and the number
has been falling ever since. By early December, after the fall of the
Taliban and military successes in Afghanistan, it was 76 percent. By early
January 2002, it was 69 percent, and by April, it was 54 percent. By June
it was 49 percent, which is where it stands now. And the trend suggests
there's no reason to believe it won't drop further, especially as the
mid-term elections approach.
Bush's ratings have
taken a similar, although less steep, slide among independents. Just before
the September attacks, 44 percent of independents approved of Bush's job-performance
rating. That number jumped to 89 percent by the end of the month. It stayed
in the 80s until February 2002, when it fell to 79 percent. It stayed
in the 70s until June, when it fell to 68 percent. After that, it wandered
between the high 60s and low 70s until recently. At the end of July, it
was 71 percent. By early August it was 65 percent. Now it's 56 percent.
(For a Gallup graph of Bush's changing support, click
here.)
Should Bush be worried
about the drop? GOP strategist Grover
Norquist wrote recently that the president's high approval rating
has been a hindrance, and not an asset, in enacting his agenda. "Back
when the president had an approval rating below 60 percent, he rammed
through a $1.3 trillion tax cut, made the Senate approve John Ashcroft
as attorney general, pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Treaty,
and gave notice that the U.S. would leave the ABM treaty in order to build
a missile defense system," Norquist wrote in The American Enterprise
magazine. "Since September 11, George W. Bush has agreed to federalize
tens of thousands of airport screeners, approved Senator John McCain's
campaign-reform legislation, and signed the most expensive farm bill in
history."
Norquist argues that
in the early months of his presidency, Bush could take on liberal interests
without the fear of plunging in the polls because at the time "liberals
weren't telling pollsters they supported him." Now, Norquist says,
"any ideological tussle results in a drop in recorded support toward
normal levels" — so the president avoids ideological tussles.
"No adviser," Norquist writes, "wants to be in the room
when the president drops from 75 percent to 65 percent in one week."
And that is Bush's
dilemma. The job-approval rating, which means little for a presidential
reelection bid that is more than two years away, is nevertheless seen
in Washington as an index of the president's powers of persuasion, particularly
his ability to push Congress to do what he wants. While that is often
true, Bush's situation today appears to be a special case. For months
after September 11, the question of Bush's job-approval rating was, for
some Democrats and independents, an index of patriotism in which one was
supposed to give a certain answer. Now that is fading away, and Bush is
losing the nominal support of Democrats and independents who did not —
and would not ever — vote for him. Undoubtedly some of the president's
post-September 11 increase in popularity is real and lasting. But we'll
only know how much once all of his non-supporting supporters have dropped
away.
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
hat's
behind George W. Bush's declining job-approval rating, which, having once
hit 90 percent, now stands at 65 percent in the latest Gallup poll? Is
he losing favor among long-time supporters? Is he losing the support of
people who didn't approve of him before September 11 but were won over
by his handling of the war on terrorism? Or is he losing the support of
people who never really approved of him but who, for a time after September
11, told pollsters that they did?
