There’s some not-too-bad news for and some not-so-hot news for President George Bush in the latest AP-Ipsos poll: his approval rating hasn’t gone down any further but his honesty rating has taken a nosedive:
Less than half of Americans now say they think President Bush is honest, according to an AP-Ipsos poll taken at a time of increasing concerns about Iraq, a potential problem for a president who won re-election declaring that “people know where I stand.”
The percentage of people who say they consider Bush honest has dropped slightly from the start of the year. In January, 53 percent described him that way in the AP-Ipsos poll, while 45 percent said they did not believe he was honest. Now, people are just about evenly split — 48 percent saying he’s honest and 50 percent saying he’s not.
“Whether you agree or disagree with him, the president has taken a pounding on perceptions of his honesty,” said Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. She cited as one example the administration’s claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but none have been found.
That’s not a good trend for GWB, particularly if the controversy over whether Karl Rove outed the identity of a CIA person heats up and gets more publicity. Even so, though, the majority still see Bush as likable and a strong — but he’s starting to be seen as arrogant.
There will be the usual debate over metholodogy, but the bottom line is that to get a reading on how the President is doing we’ll have to see the general trend of a variety of polls over the next few months. One poll alone won’t do it.
If there is a drip-drip-drip of poll ersion in several areas, it will indicate that he’s in trouble. The ratings on this poll (and polls do differ which is why partisans can pick and choose a poll to tout just like picking your own entree at Hometown Buffet) suggest the White House should be very concerned that his credibility is starting to erode. On the other hand, his good ratings in other areas suggest he’s not in the crisis area yet.
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.