The overwhelming tide of support Bush enjoyed after 9/11 has decidedly turned, and the third of the electorate that identifies itself as moderate is no longer rallying behind their man. Like Sen. Joseph McCarthy was 50 years ago, Bush is poised for the fall from power. From public distrust to the "official" dissent of former CIA agents and ambassadors, Mark Hertsgaard spells out why Bush can't expect four more years in November.
Mark Hertsgaard is a correspondent for The Nation and Link TV and the author, most recently, of The Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World.
At the height of his power , Joseph McCarthy appeared to be invincible. Beginning in 1950, the senator from Wisconsin made a name for himself by waving around documents supposedly listing hundreds of communists employed by the U.S. government. For the next four years, no one in official Washington dared stand up to McCarthy for fear of being called communist themselves. But in 1954, drunk with power, McCarthy went too far: he attacked the U.S. Army. The Washington establishment soon turned against him as an unsteady extremist, and within months the Senate had censured him, ending his career.
Fifty years later, George W. Bush is about to suffer a similar fate. Bush too looked invincible after the 9/11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan. With help from his advisers, Bush too intimidated critics into silence by challenging their patriotism. And Bush too eventually over-reached, insisting on a war in Iraq that has now blown up in his face.
Only 43 percent of the American public want president Bush re-elected, according to Time magazine's July 19 poll, while 53 percent want a new president. During the last 50 years, no U.S. president suffering such poor approval ratings four months before Election Day has recovered to win a second term.
Polls have shown for weeks that Iraq is hurting Bush, but they only hint at the deeper problem: the Iraq debacle is turning the political middle of the United States, both inside Washington and across the country, against Mr. Bush. Politics is unpredictable, a lot can happen in four months. But absent a miraculous return to calm in Iraq, Bush is headed for defeat in November.
For all the talk of 50-50 polarization, the American electorate actually divides into thirds: one third of the electorate identifies itself as neither Republican nor Democrat but independent. Bush will never lose the support of the electorate's right-wing third nor gain the support of the left-wing third. It's the middle third who will decide his future.
Bush's approval ratings soared after 9/11 because the middle third rallied behind him. And they stayed behind him through the initial phase of combat in Iraq. But when the U.S. occupation began unraveling into violence and scandal this spring, many independents began to rethink their support of both the war and the president who launched it. A poll in early June by the Annenberg Election Center found that nearly twice as many self-described independents disapproved of Bush's handling of Iraq as approved it. By late June, a majority of all Americans was saying that the war has not been worth its cost and has increased, not reduced, the threat of terrorism.
Most dangerous for Bush, continued casualties, assassinations of Iraqi leaders and televised beheadings have fed Americans' doubts that the Iraq war can ever be won. These doubts are more important than absolute casualty numbers. Analysis of public opinion during previous wars shows that Americans will accept relatively high casualties if they believe that a war is being won. But if they conclude that the war cannot be won, even small numbers of casualties are unacceptable. This dynamic not only explains the erosion of Bush's support in recent months, it suggests his ratings will fall further in the months ahead, unless casualties in Iraq drop dramatically. The Bush administration plainly hopes the transfer of official sovereignty will reassure Americans that U.S. involvement in Iraq is winding down. But no amount of White House spin can disguise the fact that 138,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq past Election Day. Insurgents are certain to continue targeting these troops, ensuring more casualties. The continuing violence will not only convince more Americans that Iraq shouldn't have been invaded in the first place, it will keep Iraq in the news through Election Day.
And the tone of news coverage will be skeptical, largely because the center is also turning against Bush inside Washington. Most Washington journalists base their news coverage on official sources, with the result that the press corps ends up reflecting the opinions of leading factions inside the Beltway. This tendency helped Bush after the 9/11 attacks, when Democrats and Republicans alike kept criticisms to themselves for the sake of national unity. But over the last year, more and more Washington insiders have dared to oppose Bush's foreign policy.
In mid-June, for example, a group of 27 former generals and diplomats issued a statement urging that Bush not be re-elected because his foreign policy has damaged U.S. national security. The White House dismissed the group, Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, as partisan opponents. But the conservative pedigree of many of its members—Jack Matlock was ambassador to the Soviet Union under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and William Crowe was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Reagan—made that jibe unpersuasive.
This official dissent—coming on the heels of criticism from former ambassador Joseph Wilson, former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clark, the current CIA official known as "Anonymous" and others—in itself triggers news stories, but it also colors the tone of overall coverage. The same newspapers and TV networks that cheered Bush on through the initial combat phase in Iraq are now running stories highlighting the problems for the occupation. Journalists embarrassed by how uncritically they transmitted the administration's now-discredited rationales for war are trying to make up for their errors, and they have plenty of official sources to draw upon.
The 2004 election is, in short, John Kerry's to lose. With polls showing independents increasingly supporting him, Kerry looks to be a probable winner in several swing states, especially now that he has chosen John Edwards, who appeals to centrist voters, as his running mate.
But this election is not primarily about Kerry. One last lesson from U.S. presidential history: When an incumbent runs for re-election, the vote is more a referendum on him than a judgment on his challenger. Do voters want to give this president another four years or not? Bush is running against himself in November, and thanks to Iraq, that's a losing proposition. As with McCarthy, the dawn was slow in coming, but the American middle is finally waking up.
And George W. Bush is going down.
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