If President George Bush is planning — as reports suggest — to boost the American military presence in Iraq, then a new poll shows he is doing it at the worst possible time:
Support for President Bush’s management of the Iraq war has dropped to an all-time low even as his overall approval remains tepid but steady, according to a CNN poll released Monday.
The survey, conducted Friday through Sunday by Opinion Research Corp., found support for Bush’s handling of the Iraq conflict has decreased to 28 percent from 34 percent in a poll taken October 13-15.
And a record 70 percent of respondents said they disapproved of Bush’s war management, up from 64 percent in the October poll. (Watch CNN’s Bill Schneider’s report on the poll Video)
Meanwhile, Bush’s overall job approval was 36 percent — down only 1 percentage point from the previous CNN poll to pose that question December 5-7.
Sixty-two percent said they disapproved of his performance in office, up from 57 percent in the early December poll.
Politics is seldom effective when done totally in a vacuum, with zilch support. Bush isn’t quite at “zilch” yet but the numbers suggest he has reached the point where his political safety net is gone, he has no political capital left — and that members of Congress who support him in a possible controversial future course should brace themselves for political consquences come re-election time.
Even controversial policies are survivable if pressed with sharp political skills and candor-boosting credibility. Both factors have been sorely lacking in this White House — which suggests the prognosis is…more intense controversy, coupled with more erosion in public support.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.