Credibility Problem Puts GOP Plans in Jeopardy
ÂÂBy George E. Condon Jr.
ÂÂCopley News ServiceÂÂSunday 22 February 2004
Slipping Bush image may make attacks on Kerry less plausible.
ÂÂWASHINGTON â With President Bush's credibility under the fiercest assault yet, Republican plans to make an issue of the trustworthiness of his likely Democratic foe, Sen. John Kerry, have hit a snag.ÂÂBush has been stung by the absence of weapons of mass destruction that he vowed would be found in Iraq and by smaller controversies over his budget, Medicare spending and even science programs.ÂÂGOP campaign operatives are warily eyeing recent polls that for the first time show many Americans don't see the president as truthful.Â
ÂLast week, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that only 52 percent view Bush as "honest and trustworthy," down 7 points from the last poll and down significantly from a high of 71 percent in the summer of 2002.ÂÂSome White House aides dismissed that poll as an aberration because it was taken after a run of bad news for the president. But they grew concerned when a second poll, released Thursday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, also showed Bush's image slipping.ÂÂ
According to Pew Director Andrew Kohut, that image is "at the low point of his presidency."ÂÂThe most dramatic evidence of a shift came from poll participants' answers when asked to provide a one-word description of Bush. In a survey in May, positive descriptions outnumbered negative ones by a ratio of almost 2-to-1, Kohut said. In Thursday's poll, the numbers of positive and negative responses were even.ÂÂ
Perhaps most troubling to a president who prides himself on being forthright, the most frequently used negative word to describe Bush was "liar" â a word that never showed up in the May survey, Kohut said.ÂÂThis all comes at a critical moment for the president's re-election strategy. With Kerry the heavy favorite to win the Democratic nomination, the Bush campaign team is poised to launch a multimillion-dollar ad blitz designed to portray the Massachusetts senator as a hypocrite who says one thing but does another.Â
ÂLooking back on the tactics used in Bush's previous run for the White House, that has almost always been the first move against an opponent showing any strength. When Arizona Sen. John McCain won the New Hampshire primary in 2000, Bush adopted the catchphrase, "John McCain says one thing and does another." Later, in the general campaign, then-Vice President Al Gore got the same treatment.ÂÂ
This time, however, the public's growing unease over Bush's trustworthiness makes the use of such a tactic more complicated.ÂÂ"People do have some level of trust in him, and he still is obviously well-liked," said Mike McCurry, who was White House press secretary to President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.
"But there is a significant doubt now because of the quality of his argument about going to war."ÂÂMcCurry said Bush could regain his former standing but that it will be difficult.ÂÂ"It's like virginity â you only lose it once," he said. "There is a certain amount of forgiveness built into the system, but not much. Once you lose that bond of trust, it is very difficult to get it back."ÂÂFor Bush, the slide in public perception is particularly painful.
His highest praise for other world leaders is to call them "a straight shooter," and he has frequently proclaimed the importance of honesty.ÂÂ"Telling the truth is a responsibility that comes with running a country," he said in February 2003. And during a trip to Africa in October, he remarked, "It's very important for us as a government to maintain our credibility with the American people."ÂÂ
That credibility also has been undercut by controversy over Bush's National Guard service and by a budget that contains overly optimistic numbers on the deficit and doesn't include funds to pay for ongoing war operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was further eroded when the White House had to back away from its forecast for new jobs in the next year. And this week, 60 top U.S. scientists accused the White House of manipulating scientific facts to push Bush's political agenda.ÂÂ
But the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq has caused the most damage.ÂÂ"Credibility is very important to George W. Bush, and the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction . . . casts doubt on that," said professor Stephen Wayne of Georgetown University. "It makes him just another politician."ÂÂPollster John Zogby said: "People are finding it difficult to believe him on WMD.
Americans were sent into Iraq on a false premise by a president for whom Americans had high expectations . . . on those basic kinds of values like integrity. So there is a sense out there that those expectations have been dashed."ÂÂThe president took another hit when CIA Director George Tenet said none of his intelligence analysts concluded that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States, despite that exact warning from Bush.ÂÂ
Carl Cavalli, an expert on the presidency who teaches at North Georgia College, said Bush's troubles are particularly ironic "because in 2000, it was George Bush's honesty that won over Al Gore's credibility. And now we see it is the president's credibility at stake.Â
Â"He offered himself as someone who would restore honor and dignity to the White House. He campaigned on that and cultivated that image," Cavalli said. "It will be interesting to see how this plays out if his credibility is continually questioned on the war and on the economy."ÂÂSenate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said Bush is suffering a "credibility chasm."ÂÂBut the president isn't the first White House inhabitant to with credibility issues.
Dwight Eisenhower lied about U-2 flights over the Soviet Union, John F. Kennedy promised that no Americans would invade Cuba, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were ensnared by statements they made about fighting in Vietnam and Cambodia, and Clinton lied about sex.ÂÂEisenhower and Kennedy actually gained in the polls after they took responsibility for their actions. Clinton gained support as voters disassociated his personal lies from his performance in office. Johnson and Nixon never really recovered.
Nixon's lies during the Watergate scandal eventually led to his resignation.ÂÂPresidential scholar Steve Hess said, "it is far too early to see if this will have any effect on Bush." But Karlyn Bowman, an expert on public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute, said Bush should regain his footing.ÂÂ"I don't think Bush is in any trouble on it," she said, citing other polls in which his trustworthiness has fallen only slightly.ÂÂ
Bowman said the president is "just returning to a normal range" and that the current drop looks bad only because his poll ratings had run so high after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the capture of Saddam Hussein.ÂÂ"He's been through a lot of pummeling, and he's back to where he was," Bowman said. "And in the end, the judgment on a president is a performance-based judgment."ÂÂ
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state."
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
