Wednesday, December 11, 2002

Bush’s Political Problem with Iraq I may be in a minority, but at this point I am having trouble seeing how Bush will go to war this winter.  There is no doubt that he wants to. The only question is whether the price may be too high—and if recent trends continue, it appears that the price of unilateral war is going up.   There is a poll in USA Today that is quite interesting.  It finds that there is very little stomach among the American people for going to war alone—based just on Bush’s say so, despite the fact that a large majority of Americans take Bush’s words on Iraq at face value.   The relevant questions to me were, first, a general question that showed support for war has dropped 3 points in the past few weeks.  The question was Would you favor or oppose invading Iraq with U.S. ground troops in an attempt to remove Saddam Hussein from power?   58% supported this two weeks ago, and only 55% support it now, while the opposition has risen to 39% from 37%, and the number of undecided has gone up.    The other questions seemed to frame Bush’s political problem.  In summary, almost no one believes the Iraqi weapons report, but even so, 65% to 66% think the U.S. should not invade alone, but must wait for the United Nations.  Further, the same two-thirds think that the UN inspectors have to find evidence of Iraqi weapons or they would not support an invasion.  Finally, the same majority feels a need to wait and see what develops over the next few weeks.   The political problem is that Bush’s freedom for unilateral action is becoming more and more circumscribed.  The recent discovery and release of the scud missile ship didn’t help matters, nor did the blow up at the UN over the U.S. strong-arming the security council to get an early copy of the report.  The upshot is that Iraq is successfully building a case that Bush is going to war for no reason.   A large plurality believes that if the U.S. has smoking gun evidence, it has to produce it.  But all background indications seem to indicate that mostly the U.S. has wishful thinking, what ifs, and conjecture.  Without dramatic evidence to clearly show a danger, or a staged provocation, it is going to be difficult for Bush to go forward.   There is also a media story developing about the peace movement.  It started the week after the large demonstration in Washington, October 26th.  After initially ignoring the demonstration, the NY times began running more articles.  Later that week NPR actually apologized for misrepresenting the number of people.  Today many papers (Houston, Minneapolis New York)  covered the widely scattered local demonstrations held on Dec. 10th.  The media has picked up the theme that the demonstrations are being done by ordinary Americans—grandmothers, church leaders, students etc., and they seem to be focusing on the single issue of stopping the war.   So the stage is set for a media confrontation between a government bent on war, and a large segment of the population seeking peaceful solutions. This puts a premium on Bush making no screw-ups, like the scud missile ship or worse, and raises the political stakes for a unilateral war.    Bush could easily become the next Lyndon Johnson.  Johnson won in a landslide, while Bush lost the popular vote.  But after Sept. 11th, Bush’s poll popularity gave him a Johnsonian mandate.  But 4 years later, Johnson could not run, having lost the support of the American people for conducting a reckless war.  Will Bush follow in Johnson’s footsteps?  He may be damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't. 10:55:35 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2003 Toby Sackton. Last update: 1/2/2003; 11:22:22 PM.