The only events that have (temporarily) stopped the constant erosion of Bush's popularity have been 9/11, the Iraq war and the capture of Saddam. He'd better hope he finds Osama in October.
By James K. Galbraith
George W. Bush has held office for 36 months. How is he doing politically, and what can we learn from a detached look at the record?
![](http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/02/09/bush_approval/graph.gif)
First of all, notice how closely the polls track. True, the ABC-Washington Post poll tends to run a little high. Pew and Zogby tend to run a little low. But the range is not large, and all of the polls move in the same direction at the same time. This suggests they are measuring something real. The pollsters may be redundant, but they have not been wasting their time.
What is the message of these numbers? One stands out: In his entire first term, only three episodes so far have gained approval for Bush. All were related to terrorism and to war. They were 9/11, the war on Iraq, and the capture of Saddam. Taken together, the five months when Bush gained popularity on these events account for 89 percent of all the variation in the change of Bush's job approval, measured by the average of these polls.
It is not surprising that Bush's State of the Union speech dwelt so heavily on war and terror.
(snip)
But equally, consider what has happened in the other 32 months. The record is remarkably consistent: In the range of approvals above 48 percent or so -- that is, among voters who did not vote for him in 2000 -- Bush loses support, month after month. And he does so at what is nearly a constant rate. Tick, tock.
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