The Washington Monthly ran an article a few years ago about the Bush White House and the lengths it went to a) use polling; and b) pretend it didn’t. Josh Green’s piece included an amusing anecdote from late 2001 in which the press secretaries from every recent administration gathered at the White House for a friendly luncheon. Bush dropped in and mentioned the difficulties in deciding whether to issue vague warnings of possible terrorist threats or avoid unnecessary alarm by keeping imprecise threats private.
At this point, former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers piped up, “What do the poll numbers say?” All eyes turned to Bush. Without missing a beat, the famous Bush smirk crossed the president’s face and he replied, “In this White House, Dee Dee, we don’t poll on something as important as national security.”
As it turns out, that’s not quite true.
When President Bush confidently predicts victory in Iraq and admits no mistakes, admirers see steely resolve and critics see exasperating stubbornness. But the president’s full-speed-ahead message articulated in this week’s prime-time address also reflects a purposeful strategy based on extensive study of public opinion about how to maintain support for a costly and problem-plagued military mission.
The White House recently brought onto its staff one of the nation’s top academic experts on public opinion during wartime, whose studies are now helping Bush craft his message two years into a war with no easy end in sight.
This is very much consistent with the patterns Bush has followed since he became president. Rove & Co. have already decided the policies they’re going to embrace, they just need to polls to sell them, especially the unpopular ones. As Green’s Washington Montly article noted, “Clinton used polling to craft popular policies, Bush uses polling to spin unpopular ones.”
This fits into the Iraq model quite nicely. Bush isn’t using polls to tell him how to proceed; he’s using them to flesh out cynical rhetoric and political posturing to convince people that his decisions are sound and his war is worthwhile.
In shaping their message, White House officials have drawn on the work of Duke University political scientists Peter D. Feaver and Christopher F. Gelpi, who have examined public opinion on Iraq and previous conflicts. Feaver, who served on the staff of the National Security Council in the early years of the Clinton administration, joined the Bush NSC staff about a month ago as special adviser for strategic planning and institutional reform.
Feaver and Gelpi categorized people on the basis of two questions: “Was the decision to go to war in Iraq right or wrong?” and “Can the United States ultimately win?” In their analysis, the key issue now is how people feel about the prospect of winning. They concluded that many of the questions asked in public opinion polls — such as whether going to war was worth it and whether casualties are at an unacceptable level — are far less relevant now in gauging public tolerance or patience for the road ahead than the question of whether people believe the war is winnable.
“The most important single factor in determining public support for a war is the perception that the mission will succeed,” Gelpi said in an interview yesterday.
This helps make sense of Bush’s speech in North Carolina on Tuesday. Bush’s experts say the polls show Americans want a confident president during a war, so Bush exudes certainty. Being candid or acknowledging mistakes undermines this confidence, so White House poll experts urge a different course. Likewise, Bush advisers also believe public opinion shifted on Vietnam when American leaders signaled that they no longer believed the United States could win, so Bush sidesteps problems in Iraq to emphasize that we can and will win the war.
It provides a helpful context. When Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said, “The White House is completely disconnected from reality,” he was right, but probably didn’t realize that Bush isn’t looking to reality, he’s looking at the polls.