4 yrs later, Bush fights battle at home and abroad

“There is simply no question in my mind that the Iraq war has substantially undercut Bush’s ability to get other things done domestically or internationally,” said Richard Eichenberg, a professor at Tufts University who has studied Bush’s approval ratings. “When he was re-elected in the fall of 2004 he interpreted the election by saying that ‘I have political capital. I’m going to spend it.’ But the fact of the matter is he’s spent it all on Iraq and he’s got precious little left,” he said.

After the Iraq invasion, Bush’s approval ratings became linked to casualty figures and less tied to traditional factors like the economy, Eichenberg and Richard Stoll of Rice University found in researching the president’s poll numbers. “It resembles in a lot of ways what happened with President (Lyndon) Johnson in Vietnam,” Stoll said. The war “sort of looms so large that it pushes almost everything else off the agenda.”

In his initial years in office, Bush pushed an 11-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut through Congress, overhauled the nation’s education law and added a drug benefit to the health insurance programme for the elderly. His job approval ratings skyrocketed to 90 per cent after the September 11 attacks and that support helped him push through a massive reorganisation of the federal intelligence and emergency response operations, consolidating them into the Department of Homeland Security.

Even after he launched his war on terrorism against al Qaeda and its Taliban backers in Afghanistan, Bush maintained solid support at home and abroad, especially among allies in Western Europe, Eichenberg said.

Concern over Bush’s policies began to mount after his invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003. His declaration that major combat operations had ended six weeks later under a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” was considered hasty. Inspectors failed to turn up weapons of mass destruction — Bush’s justification for the war, and Americans were slow to stop looting, restore electrical power and revive oil production. The Iraq enterprise began to look like a rushed job with little justification and no postwar planning.

As the death toll mounted, Bush’s job approval numbers began a slide that has continued until now. He narrowly won re-election in 2004 pledging to win the war on terror, reform the Social Security retirement programme, deal with illegal immigration and solidify the Republican majority in Congress. He made little headway on domestic issues after the vote.

–David Alexander