When President Bush presents his acutely-telegraphed announcement that he wants to increase troops in Iraq as part of a “surge” (escalation) he will do so from one of the weakest political positions possible, a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll indicates:
President Bush will outline his “new way forward” in Iraq on Wednesday to a nation that overwhelmingly opposes sending more U.S. troops and is increasingly skeptical that the war can be won.
A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday shows a daunting sales job ahead for the White House, which is considering a plan to deploy up to 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq.
Those surveyed oppose the idea of increased troop levels by 61%-36%. Approval of the job Bush is doing in Iraq has sunk to 26%, a record low.
In other words: his clout is — at best — limited among the public at large. MORE:
Views of the war will be difficult to change with rhetoric alone, says Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. And if the public expresses strong opposition to Bush’s plan, he says, Congress “may feel emboldened to exert what control they have to stop or at least make it more difficult for the president to move forward.”
The findings contained bad news for GWB, but a bit of a silver lining as well — and a cautionary note for Democrats:
•Nearly half of those surveyed say the United States can’t achieve its goals in Iraq regardless of how many troops it sends. One in four say U.S. goals can be achieved only with an increase in troop numbers.
•Eight in 10 say the war has gone worse than the Bush administration expected. Of those people, 53% say Bush deserves “a great deal” of blame; 41% place a great deal of blame on Iraqi political leaders.
•By 72%-25%, Americans say Bush doesn’t have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq. Congressional Democrats fare only a little better: 66%-25%.
WARNING TO DEMOCRATS: That’s a sign that specific proposals are going to be needed and that if hearings are conducted on bungled aspects of the Iraq war, they’ll have to be forward-looking and solution-oriented. AND:
Even so, Democrats take control of Congress amid a wave of good feeling. By 2-to-1, Americans say they want congressional Democrats, not Bush, to have more influence over the direction of the nation.
The president’s overall job approval rating is 37%, up 2 percentage points from mid-December.
That means:
(1) The general public (which excludes Rush and Sean) is willing to give the benefit of the doubt now to what the Democrats say about the war, back their demands for reasonable questions about policy, and give a serious hearing to what they propose. Bush & Co. finding a new twist to a “cut and run” charge won’t do.
(2) Bush’s job approval rating, though low, is still not in the sub-basement level according to this poll. Which means Democrats would be wise not to give him the back of their political hand.
But, overall, Bush’s big speech comes as his political capital is mostly spent and his credibility is at a low among Democrats, independents and even some Republicans — particularly on the war issue. It’ll be a hard sell since the customers trusted the previous advertising and have tried the basic product already — and they don’t like it.
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.