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News :: Peace |
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As Opposition Grows, Bush's Ratings Slump |
Current rating: 0 |
by Matthew Engel
(No verified email address) |
20 Jan 2003
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While the rally was taking place, a new Time-CNN poll was released, showing the president's approval rating down to 53%, its lowest in any survey since September 11 2001, with barely half supporting his foreign policy and only 27% believing the economy will improve in the next 12 months. Traditionally, national pessimism dethrones presidents. |
The spirit of the 60s returned to the streets of Washington at the weekend with a massive protest aimed at stopping the war in Iraq. The rally, the centerpiece of a day of worldwide demonstrations, was the most impressive show of opposition to President George Bush's policies in the 16 months of global crisis.
Mr Bush was at the presidential country retreat, Camp David, while the hordes trampled the National Mall close to the back garden of the White House. But the roars of the crowd will have reached him even there, not so much because of the numbers of the protesters, but because of a growing sense that public opinion in general may be shifting in their direction.
While the rally was taking place, a new Time-CNN poll was released, showing the president's approval rating down to 53%, its lowest in any survey since September 11 2001, with barely half supporting his foreign policy and only 27% believing the economy will improve in the next 12 months. Traditionally, national pessimism dethrones presidents.
While the hundreds of thousands marching in Washington and San Francisco grabbed most of the headlines, small town America was also protesting. Here demonstrators gather outside the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda., Calif., in protest of a possible war with Iraq, Saturday, Jan. 18, 2003. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
On the Mall there was great pessimism about the future of mankind, but the optimism about the future of the cause was palpable. After a year of chuntering, the president's opponents have begun to find a means of expression. With the Democratic party still fearful of directly opposing Mr Bush, it is starting on the streets rather than inside the political system.
In the absence of turnstiles and ticket sales, exact numbers on these occasions are notoriously elusive. Police did not quarrel with the organizers' estimate of 500,000, though that seemed excessive. Certainly, there can hardly have been less than 100,000, especially bearing in mind the day's one undeniable statistic: the temperature never rose above -4C (25F), and the grass in front of the Capitol where everyone gathered was more like tundra. Many local people appeared briefly, heard a couple of the three dozen speeches, then retreated to their central heating.
Some people, however, had come too far to make that an option. Adam Dekeyrel traveled down with two busloads of protesters on the 22-hour journey from Rochester, Minnesota. He insisted they were the vanguard of popular feeling: "There's a lot of people staying at home afraid to say anything," he said. "They're not likely to get involved because they don't know how to get involved."
Other coaches came from across the eastern half of the US, with 22 from the small state of Vermont alone. There were protests in San Francisco (organizers' estimate: 200,000 people; police estimate: 55,000) and in smaller cities, most of them as frigid as Washington, across the country.
There was a small pro-Bush counter-demonstration on the Mall involving about three dozen people. There were no clashes - only two arrests were reported all day - but the minority did somehow look colder than everyone else. They invoked the patriotic dead by standing near the Vietnam war memorial, but many soldiers who fought in Vietnam were also there, on the other side of the argument.
"In the history of the US we do not start or initiate conflict," said Mike Blankenship of North Carolina, a former marine. "This runs counter to everything that's American."
"We did at least go into Vietnam with the idea that we were fighting for liberty, even if it was a bad idea," said Charlie Shobe of Maryland. "This one there's no doubt we're going in for oil."
The No Blood for Oil theme ran through many of the placards held by the demonstrators. Others invoked the memory of Martin Luther King, whose birthday is celebrated as a public holiday in the US today.
The anti-war rally was organized by International Answer (Act Now To Stop War and End Racism), whose leading light is Ramsey Clark, himself on the far side of the fence during the Vietnam war when he was Lyndon Johnson's attorney-general. Answer was organizing small and unfocused protests less than three weeks after the September 11 attacks, but its appeal has grown exponentially since Iraq took center stage. There was a big protest in Washington last October, almost ignored by the media. Stung by criticism of their coverage then, the main US papers yesterday gave this event lavish coverage.
Despite Mr Clark's presence, Answer's roots are on the extreme left of American politics, and they have had trouble attracting frontline politicians to their platforms. The main speakers in Washington were Ron Kovic, the anti-war activist who was author of Born on the Fourth of July, Jessica Lange, the actor, and the Rev Jesse Jackson, the bandwagon-jumper. The headliners in San Francisco were the 60s folk singer Joan Baez and Martin Sheen, who plays the president in The West Wing but does not aspire to be one.
The next breakthrough will come if one of the real Democratic aspirants for the presidency chooses to take over the Sheen role. The Rev Al Sharpton, a declared candidate but not a serious one, was a speaker on the Mall. However, it is no longer unthinkable that, say, John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator and Vietnam veteran, might be emboldened enough by the polls to assume leadership of the anti-war movement.
The president's iron grip on Americans' patriotic impulses is undoubtedly weakening. As one anti-war poster in the Mall put it: "It's OUR flag too."
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/
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Bush Approval Rating In Free Fall |
by Stewart M. Powell
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
20 Jan 2003
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Hearst Washington Bureau
The Gallup poll released Friday echoed other recent polls showing Bush's historically high 90 percent approval rating after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has declined to 61 percent.
A Gallup survey from earlier last week showed Bush getting a 58 percent approval rating the lowest since before 9-11.
"If the economy wasn't so bad, the decline would have been more gradual," Gallup's Jeffrey Jones says.
The slippage recalls that suffered by President George Bush after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Bush, father of the president, enjoyed an 89 percent approval rating the week after a U.S.-led coalition evicted Iraqi occupation forces from Kuwait in a stunning four-day ground war.
But 16 months later, the elder Bush's approval ratings had plummeted to 32 percent, setting the stage for his defeat in 1992.
"Everybody is watching to see if Bush goes the way of his father from 90 percent to toast in barely a year," said William Schneider, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute. "Right now I'd call this drop a decline not yet a collapse."
Fifty-five percent of those surveyed by Gallup said Bush was not spending enough time on the economy, which remains afflicted with the worst unemployment in almost nine years, a three-year stock market decline that has cost stockholders almost $6 trillion, and economic growth of barely 1.5 percent over the last seven quarters.
Only 36 percent of respondents said they would "definitely vote" for Bush in 2004.
"Bush is suffering a rapid decline, just like his father," says James Thurber, a presidential scholar at American University. "With high unemployment, a low stock market hitting the middle class, a controversial economic stimulus package and anxiety about the war in Iraq no wonder his approval rating has dropped."
Bruce Buchanan, a presidential scholar at the University of Texas at Austin, says Americans are taking a second look at controversies over Bush's domestic proposals, now that fears of terrorist attacks have diminished.
Bush's job approval ratings have continued to slip since the historic GOP gains in the House and Senate in the midterm congressional election in November.
Buchanan cited Bush's economic stimulus package and his resubmission of controversial judicial nominations to the Senate. He also said Bush and the GOP suffered because of the controversy over remarks by Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., endorsing the 1948 Dixiecrat segregationist presidential campaign of retiring Sen. Storm Thurmond, R-S.C.
Bush helped orchestrate Lott's resignation as incoming Senate majority leader.
Only 12 percent in the Gallup survey said Bush's plan would make a big difference in their family finances.
Bush's popularity also suffers because of uncertainty over Iraq. The percentage of Americans who consider Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein a threat has slipped from 65 percent to 56 percent, according to the latest Gallup survey.
Support for an attack on Iraq remains highly conditional, according to a survey by Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
Seventy-six percent of respondents said they favored using military force if U.N. inspectors found Iraq hiding weapons of mass destruction. But only 46 percent want force if inspectors find Iraq hiding "the ability to easily make weapons."
Iraq's failure to prove the absence of weapons of mass destruction the cornerstone of Bush's demands warranted the use of force for only 29 percent of those asked.
Antiwar sentiments have started to surface, as well. The Pew survey found 53 percent of respondents believed Bush had not clearly explained the rationale for using U.S. military forces to oust Saddam up from 37 percent who expressed that sentiment in September.
In a Newsweek poll released Saturday, 60 percent said they would prefer the Bush administration allow more time to find an alternative to war, according to the Associated Press.
Support for a military option would be strong, 81 percent, if the United States were to act with full allied support and the backing of the U.N. Security Council. A majority would be opposed should this country act without the support of the United Nations and had no more than one or two allies.
The president's job approval was at 56 percent in the Newsweek poll and 53 percent in a CNN-Time poll released over the weekend. His approval rate was in the 60s in both polls in November.
According to the CNN-Time poll, the decline comes as a result of slightly higher disapproval among Republicans, independents and Democrats.
Half in the CNN-Time poll, 50 percent, said they approve Bush's handling of foreign policy, while 42 percent disapprove. In July, before the administration began its public campaign about Iraq, 64 percent approved his handling of foreign policy.
People worry about the impact of the United States' taking military action against Iraq.
More than half in the Newsweek poll, 54 percent, said they expect it would cause serious divisions with allies. And more than two-thirds thought it would cause serious problems throughout the Arab countries and would cause Saddam to use biological or chemical weapons against Israel.
The experts said Bush can look for "a blip" in his popularity after the nationally televised State of the Union address on Jan. 28.
Jones and Schneider agreed that the approval rating of 61 percent recorded Friday showed Bush remains a force to be reckoned with in 2004.
"If his father had 61 percent approval, there would not have been a President Clinton," Schneider said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
© 2003 San Antonio Express-News
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