Does George W Bush Like Us Terrified?

Are Subtitles as Forgettable as Vice Presidents?

Published on August 6, 2004 By blogic In Politics

Today, I get to be a contrarian for both the Left and the Right!

To paraphrase Salon's War Room, there's a chart that's seemingly bounced from one end of the Internet to the other this morning, which maps Bush's popularity against terror alerts. The chart is compiled by "Julius Civitatus", and is displayed and discussed at his blog.

Julius has this to say:

There are few things that are quite evident from the chart:

- Whenever his ratings dip, there's a new terror alert.

- Every terror alert is followed by a slight uptick of Bush approval ratings.

- Whenever there are many unfavorable headlines, there's another alert or announcement (distraction effect).

- As we approach the 2004 elections, the number and frequency of terror alerts keeps growing, to the point that they collapse in the graphic. At the same time, Bush ratings are lower than ever.

Well, I looked at the chart pretty carefully, and read the timeline description. While I'm as anti-Bush as the next guy, I don't see much evidence that the terror alerts are direct responses to specific downturns in his approval.

As a number of people have pointed out, including Paul Krugman I believe, Bush's popularity slopes down at a steady pace, interrupted by three short major upsurges. Those upturns are 9/11, the Iraq War, and the capture of Saddam Hussein.

Statistically, that's the easiest way to explains Bush's approval ratings, they started in the mid to upper 50s during the post-inauguration honeymoon phase, and have dropped at a constant rate since then. The few deviations from that are from major terrorism related events, at least as perceived by most of the public.

The other deviation from the downward slope is recent months. It appears that there's 45% base of support for Bush that will hold no matter what happens. Given how polarized everything is, that's not a surprise.

As far as I can tell, the alerts have never had much affect on his popularity, although they presumably distract from other news. Personally, I think their timing is sometimes suspect (I'm thinking of the one after the Democratic Convention, based on three to four year old news -- my wife's comment was: "oh yeah, the information was good; turns out, they already attacked that major financial center in NYC, on 9/11!"), but it doesn't appear to boost his ratings much.

Comments

InfoGeek

on Aug 06, 2004

"As a number of people have pointed out, including Paul Krugman I believe, Bush's popularity slopes down at a steady pace, interrupted by three short major upsurges. Those upturns are 9/11, the Iraq War, and the capture of Saddam Hussein."

So, you think we might "find" Osama around Halloween? No more Boogy -man?

I know, cynical. I am in that kind of mood.

IG

CS Guy

on Aug 06, 2004

Personally, I think their timing is sometimes suspect (I'm thinking of the one after the Democratic Convention, based on three to four year old news -- my wife's comment was: "oh yeah, the information was good; turns out, they already attacked that major financial center in NYC, on 9/11!"),

It wasn't three to four year old news. The surveillance data the terrorists were collected was updated in January. bin Laden had issued (in a taped commentary) a demand that coalition forces leave Iraq by August 15 or suffer the consequences. The intelligence that you call 3 or 4 years old was just recently discovered in Pakistan. Add these things up and it sounds like a reasonable threat to me. Is it a definate threat? No, but thats not how intelligence works.

If an alert was not issued, and one of those targets was attacked, how do you think people would react if they found out we had warning?

CS Guy

on Aug 06, 2004

but it doesn't appear to boost his ratings much.

Of course not. Those are important financial institutions, and issueing warnings for those sites can only hurt the economy. That's bad news for Bush.

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