George W Bush and the media regarding the war on terror in Afganitstan and Iraq over the past few years

Bush

George W. Bush and the Media Regarding the War on Terror

In Afghanistan and Iraq Over the Past Few Years

This report looks at several polls regarding the United States of America's Presidential Approval ratings and how those rating are affected by specific media stories. To be more specific, the report aims to answer how public support for George W. Bush is affected by events such as the war on terrorism in Afghanistan, the war for oil in Iraq, and the devastating effects of the hijacked plane attacks on the United States. The internet has become an excellent source for gathering data and opinion polls so this report utilizes the Roper Center web site to provide complete listings of various polls for the Presidential Job Approval ratings over the course of George W. Bush's terms in office.

A secondary objective of the report is to analyze how the media has influenced these approval polls. The report tries to examine how the President's approval ratings fluctuate based on the media's coverage of events such as the war with Iraq, American military casualties because of the war in Iraq, the recent Abu Gharib Prison scandal or the capture of Saddam Hussein.

Job Approval ratings

As can be seen in the table below, George W. Bush was seen in the national polls as basically an ordinary leader with no real figures jumping out at the reader in the early stages of his administration. The majority of the polls in the nation hovered around a fifty percent approval rating. The nation seemed to be recovering from an election that seemed tainted at best.

The American people must have been waiting for something to help them bond with the man many thought took his office by cheating with the help of his younger brother who just happened to be the Governor in the same state where the scandal occurred. But then came the terrorist attacks on America. September 11, 2001, saw the nation and the world stunned into submission as the once great World Trade Center facility came crashing down in the blink of an eye.

The amazing thing about that event is how the President seemed to take charge and thus his approval ratings reflected the opportunity the nation had to bond with President Bush. The Bush approval ratings numbers jumped from the fifty percent range well into the eighty percent level and the Washington Post ratings were as high as ninety percent. One of the most amazing statistics in regard to the Presidential Approval ratings for George W. Bush was that his handling of the 9-11 situation propelled him to one of the highest approval ratings in presidential history.

Date Organization Approve Disapprove No Opinion Sample Size Notes 9/27-28/01

PSRA/Newsweek

WashPost

PSRA/Pew

Wirthlin Worldwide

Gallup/CNN/USA

PSRA/Newsweek

CBS/NYT

Fox/OpinDynamics

RV

Amer. Res. Group

NBC/WSJ

Harris/Time/CNN

PSRA/Newsweek

PSRA/Pew

Democracy Corps

Gallup

Gallup/CNN/USA

PSRA/Pew (the Roper Center, 2004)

These high ratings figures stayed well into the next year as the approval ratings ranged around seventy percent or more as the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the proposed war to revenge the terrorist attacks in Afghanistan loomed. The nation bonded with its President and supported the actions his office released.

In October of 2001, Afghanistan was officially attacked and the ratings once again jumped upward. The problems started for the administration around March of 2002. Many believed that the President was going out of his way to repeat the mistakes made by his father. President George HW Bush used the liberation of Kuwait as a reason to attack Saddam Hussein. The son used weapons of mass destruction as his justification. In hindsight, those weapons were never found and must likely never existed.

The approval ratings took a beating and a second United States invasion of Iraq did not help. As the economy started to lag Bush seemed to hope that capturing Hussein would help but even the big capture only pushed the approval rating up into the low sixties. "While Hitler managed to elude capture by killing himself, Saddam was caught by U.S. soldiers of the 4th Armored Infantry Division. He surrendered, spitting and cursing -- in French, reportedly." (Dale, 2003)

Somehow the president survived the recent election and many democrats have hinted that maybe the fix was in again. No matter, the president survived and his approval rating were down, they were high enough to beat Senator Kerry and the Democrats.

Date Organization Approve Disapprove No Opinion Sample Size Notes 11/7-10/04

Gallup

LAT

Exiting Voters

Democracy Corps

Marist

GW/Battleground

LV (the Roper Center, 2004)

Media

Media coverage of the Bush administration has been too busy jumping from one topic to the next so there has been little overall damage to the Bush administration. When ever the situation gets too hot there seems to be a new story to take the heat off of the last one. Unlike the Monica Lewinski situation for Bill Clinton, there has yet to be a sustained direct attack on the Bush administration. The war on Iraq, the bungling of the search for Bin Laden, the ineffective attack on Afghanistan, the Abu Gharib Prison scandal, escalating gas and oil prices and the overall rate of jobs lost in a poor economy all by themselves would be enough to bring down the administration. but, for some unforeseen reason, the media has bounced between all of these events and therefore has never made the point to the American people that all is not well and we should really tie these results to the current administration. No sooner are we focused on one major story, the media shifts gears and changes to a new subject. This change limits the nation from following up or getting a true understanding of the situation.

America was reading about election returns from Ohio and Florida as they completely overlooked the fact that the casualty rate in Iraq is totally unacceptable considering the war was officially over months ago. Yet the fact that Fallujah, Iraq is currently at war with the United States as though it was its own country has been whitewashed by world oil prices reaching new highs and Scott Peter's finally being found guilty. Oh, and wasn't there supposed to be internal elections in Iraq. Did the Bush team want us to focus on the elections in Iraq to avoid us noticing the obvious flaws in our own election process? or, where the heck is Bin Laden? The point is that the Bush administration has benefited from our overly scattered media.