The War Comes Home
Seething anger--and looming new doubts
James Sheppard, 43, of Homerville, Ohio, watched his son Clinton head off to war in late March, and is thankful that Clinton has now returned after suffering from repeated heat strokes. But Sheppard is not a happy man. He supported the war in Afghanistan because he felt it was important to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. But Iraq, he says, is another story: "I'm a registered Republican, but I wouldn't trust my president to run a McDonald's right now." Sheppard says he finds himself thinking back now to all the young marines he met in Akron in January, when his son's unit was shipping out. "You meet these kids, you look back on their faces, and now you know some of them are dead," he says. "It disgusts me."
Some of the ill will can be traced to the contrast between the current reality in Iraq and the historical rhetoric. On Nov. 15, 2002, for example, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told an Infinity Radio call-in show: "The idea that it's going to be a long, long, long battle of some kind, I think, is belied by the fact of what happened in 1990 [in the Persian Gulf War]. Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that." President Bush declared famously on May 1, 2003: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended." As recently as May 30, only three months ago, Vice President Cheney told CNN's Larry King that the Iraq insurgency was "in the last throes."
Polling indicates that the president is indeed suffering from a credibility gap. A July poll by the Pew Research Center found that only 49 percent of Americans said Bush is trustworthy, compared with 62 percent in September 2003. Other recent polls don't have much good news for Bush either. A Gallup Poll taken August 8-11 showed only 45 percent of Americans approve of the job he is doing as president, while 51 percent disapprove, nearly the same as a month earlier. "If he is sitting at 44 or 45," says a senior Bush adviser, "his bullhorn gets weaker." The president's senior advisers are no longer sure, as they were as recently as two months ago, that Bush's hard-core conservative support will prevent his job approval from falling below 40 percent, which could be seen as a sign of serious weakness.
White House officials admit that Bush's much-publicized rash of bill signings this month has done little to convince Americans that the administration and congressional Republicans are on the right course. Bush signed a transportation bill and an energy bill in early August in ceremonies designed to show that the White House and the GOP-controlled Congress are working on the public's business. But the public isn't very impressed, partly because voters are much more concerned about healthcare, rising gasoline prices, and Iraq.
Agendas. Not that everything looks bleak. Bush has been underestimated before, and he could surprise his critics again. The president seems likely, for example, to win Senate approval for John G. Roberts for the Supreme Court, and he has an aggressive agenda for the fall, including a Social Security overhaul, immigration reform, and tax changes. But they are all divisive issues that won't lend themselves to easy passage.
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