Juan Cole: How Iraq Is Hurting Bush's Poll Numbers

An ABC News-Washington Post poll released Sunday:

Percentage of Americans who disapprove of Bush administation policy in Iraq: 51
Percentage who approve: 47
Percentage who think Bush has made the US more prosperous: less than 10
Percentage who say Bush cannot understand their problems: 58
Percentage who disapprove of Bush's handling of the economy: 53
Percentage who think the economy is more important than terrorism as an issue: 62

I think the most important statistic in this set is that 58% say Bush cannot understand their problems. All the folksy Texas malapropisms in the world have not been able to convince ordinary Americans that this prince from a Northeast finance and political dynasty is one of them. What gave it away? It wasn't the huge tax giveaways to the rich. Americans seldom mind rich people getting breaks, since they all plan on being rich themselves one day. It was that princes can get consumed by foreign wars in distant places, but ordinary Americans can seldom focus on such things longer than a year or two, more especially when their economic situation is faltering. Bush is giving away their money to foreigners, and sacrificing their boys to a foreign adventure. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction has demonstrated to people that it hadn't been necessary to the country's defense. And there is only one word in the lexicon of ordinary Americans for an expensive foreign war that didn't need to be fought, and that is boondoggle.