Confidence in Bush, Iraq War Is Sinking, Polls Show

Even as President Bush’s reelection campaign spends millions of dollars to burnish his image as a steadfast leader in the fight against terrorism, an array of new polls shows that the Iraqi prisoner abuse furor is undermining that effort and shaking public confidence in the administration’s ability to win the war in Iraq.

The surveys, taken over the last two weeks, found a range of danger signs for Bush. Support for the war is at its lowest ebb since the invasion last year, and the president’s overall approval rating and the public’s general comfort level with the state of the nation are sinking.

Although the surveys show Bush and his presumed Democratic rival, Sen. John F. Kerry, remain locked in a close race, pollsters and even some Republican strategists say the most important indicators of whether an incumbent is likely to win are -- at least for the moment -- grim for Bush.

Unlike the violence several weeks ago in Fallouja that caused mounting U.S. casualties, which did not seem to affect the president’s overall ratings, the prison controversy has created a sense that events are spinning out of Bush’s control, pollsters said.

“Clearly, the pictures of prison abuse have had a big impact on public opinion,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, a nonpartisan group that studies public opinion. “The bottom hasn’t fallen out of support for the war, but confidence in that operation is low and support is teetering.”

The poll numbers are sparking concern in some GOP circles that events in Iraq will so overshadow the president’s attempts to paint a more positive image of his record and portray Kerry in negative terms that the Massachusetts senator will have an opening to surge after his nominating convention this summer.

In the surveys, Bush does not even win much credit for new job growth and other improvements in the economy -- trends he showcased on his “Yes, America Can” bus tour last week through several states as the prison scandal dominated the news.

Said one Republican who works closely with the Bush campaign: “The more important fact is that [Bush is] going down” in the survey results. “All Kerry has to have is a couple good weeks” and he can build a lead against Bush.

In one survey by Pew, published this week, 46% of respondents said the war was going well -- the first dip below 50% since the poll first posed the question after last year’s invasion.

At the same time, the survey showed that only one in three respondents was satisfied with “the way things are going in the country today,” the lowest satisfaction rate measured by the poll in eight years. About 48% said they disapproved of how Bush is handling his job, compared with 44% who approved. It was his highest disapproval rating in the Pew survey since he took office.

In another survey, conducted by Gallup for CNN and USA Today, 54% of Americans said they thought the war was not worthwhile, the highest proportion to offer that opinion for that poll. And 44% said it was a mistake to go into Iraq in the first place, another new high.

In Ohio, one of the campaign’s key battleground states, a poll of likely voters released Thursday by the nonpartisan American Research Group gave Kerry a lead over Bush, 49% to 42%, even when independent Ralph Nader was a choice.

“Bush has lost majority support for his overall performance and for his Iraq situation, and that’s not positive news for the White House,” said Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor-in-chief.

Bush campaign officials offered a different interpretation.

They argued that Kerry has failed to build a solid lead despite the copious press coverage he received as he cruised through the Democratic primaries and caucuses, and even after the recent prison abuse scandal.

Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt also noted that every survey showed that growing numbers of likely voters view Kerry as a flip-flopper and a tax-raiser, two labels the president’s advertisements have stressed.

GOP strategists said it was important for Bush to show he is not captive to the events in Iraq, and that he is working on a variety of issues of importance to voters.

This week, he focused almost exclusively on his education agenda during campaign stops in Arkansas and West Virginia, seeking the kind of favorable coverage from local media that is harder to get from the national press.

By that measure, his trip to Van Buren, Ark., was a success. He was on the ground less than two hours, but his speech on education dominated the front page of the local edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette the next day, played above stories about the decapitation of an American in Iraq and the prison controversy.

At the same time, White House officials are deferring to the Pentagon such sticky questions as whether the prison pictures should be released to the public and how international law applies to the treatment of detainees during wartime.

Republican strategists argue that the timeline over the next few months favors Bush as well. An appearance in Normandy at the end of the month marking the D-day invasion will serve to “remind us why we fight,” one strategist said. The campaign also is hoping that the June 30 handover of sovereignty in Iraq will knock the prison case off the front pages.

“The race is a roller coaster, and right now we’re in a trough for W,” said GOP pollster Neil Newhouse, referring to the president by his middle initial. “Once we get by this prisoner situation, he’ll get a bounce back and move back up ... in terms of support.”

Still, the recent surveys were enough to put Kerry in a good mood aboard his campaign plane Thursday.

“I’d rather be where we are, growing, than where they are,” Kerry told reporters, bringing his hands together to indicate shrinking.

John Mueller, a professor at Ohio State University who has studied public opinion in wartime, said recent events of the last few weeks reminded him of the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam, when North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. positions convinced many Americans that the war there was unwinnable.

“The initial effect of the Iraqi attacks on the Americans in Fallouja was an uptick in support, with people becoming more hawkish,” Mueller said. “But over time, general support for the war has declined.”

He added: “At this point, the number of casualties [in Iraq] is incredibly low by Vietnam standards. But we’ve seen a low tolerance for casualties beginning in the first Gulf War, when polls found that 500 or 1,000 casualties would cause a real decline in support.”

More than 58,000 U.S. troops died in Vietnam between 1961 and 1972. Public support for that war began declining seriously in 1967, when the death toll stood at about 10,000.

In contrast, 774 American troops have died in Iraq so far.

Times staff writers Doyle McManus and Janet Hook contributed to this report from Washington, and Matea Gold contributed from Little Rock, Ark.