Confidence in Bush's Job on Terror Steadily Eroding Among Ind.'s

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/04/02/bush_terror/index.html

NewsView: Bush loses ground on terror


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Will Lester



April 2, 2004 | WASHINGTON (AP) --

...Bush's image as the wartime steward has taken a hit, from former counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke's compelling testimony that the Bush administration ignored the terrorist threat for months to the president's insistence _ then reversal _ that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice won't testify before the Sept. 11 commission....

Bush's approval rating on handling terrorism dropped from 70 percent to 57 percent between January and March in a Newsweek poll released last weekend. Other polls have shown his approval dropping from the mid 60s to the high 50s during the winter.

Bush has lost little ground in the last two months among Republicans on the terrorism issue, but he lost 23 percentage points among Democrats and 13 points among independents in that poll....

More than half of voters, particularly independents, say they agree with claims that Bush didn't pay enough attention to terrorism before the attacks and say he was more focused on invading Iraq than making terrorism his top priority.

Unclear is what impact the images of the grisly deaths of four Americans Wednesday in the Iraqi town of Fallujah will have on the president's standing....

... with its Richard Clarke's voice TV commercial. Given the cumulative effect of two and a half years of the Rove propaganda machine's glorification of Bush as Decisive Leader, even DEMOCRATS take time to de-program. Indipendents will take longer, and right-wing Republicans will take longest of all.