Confusing Polls, But Do They Matter?

This is good news for the President:

Dec. 19, 2005 — The recent elections in Iraq and an improved economic outlook at home have shifted public support in the president's direction, lifting him from career lows in his job performance and personal ratings alike.

The president still faces significant challenges, including majority disapproval of his overall performance, substantial skepticism about the war and roughly 50-50 ratings on his personal honesty and his handling of ethics. Still, each has moved his way.

Overall, 47 percent of Americans in this ABC News/Washington Post poll now approve of George W. Bush's work in office; 52 percent disapprove. While hardly robust, that is up from a career low 39-60 percent in early November to its best in nearly six months.

The president's recent speechmaking on Iraq may have helped him. But public opinion tends to move on the basis of facts on the ground rather than political pronouncements, and the most striking change in this poll is linked to last week's successful elections in Iraq.

Meanwhile CNN is going with a poll that is showing little or no improvement for the President's approval numbers.

So what does all this mean? Probably just that most Americans are confused about Iraq and the President's job performance right now. But I'm inclined to believe that these roller-coaster poll results don't really matter.

Since the decision to invade Iraq was made the media and the political left in this country have been in near constant attack Bush mode. Every story out of Iraq that can be given a negative perspective is given just that, and very move by President Bush is cast as either crass political maneuvering or the desperate flailings of an impotent leader.

Yet throughout all of that the President has remained true to his objectives in Iraq, and we have attained a good number of those goals. Iraq has a democratically elected government that is the result of three successful elections. The Iraqi insurgent groups are beginning to put down their guns and join in the newly founded political process in that country.

Back during the 2004 election President Bush had this to say about the war in Iraq:

Helping construct a stable democracy after decades of dictatorship is a massive undertaking. Yet we have a great advantage. Whenever people are given a choice in the matter, they prefer lives of freedom to lives of fear. Our enemies in Iraq are good at filling hospitals, but they do not build any. They can incite men to murder and suicide, but they cannot inspire men to live, and hope, and add to the progress of their country. The terrorists' only influence is violence, and their only agenda is death.

Our agenda, in contrast, is freedom and independence, security and prosperity for the Iraqi people. And by removing a source of terrorist violence and instability in the Middle East, we also make our own country more secure.

Our coalition has a clear goal, understood by all — to see the Iraqi people in charge of Iraq for the first time in generations. America's task in Iraq is not only to defeat an enemy, it is to give strength to a friend - a free, representative government that serves its people and fights on their behalf. And the sooner this goal is achieved, the sooner our job will be done.

These sort of statements from the President are what prompted 62,000,000+ Americans to put George W. Bush back in the White House for another four years. There have been some dark times for the President since the November 2004 election, but he has stuck to his guns. He is doing the things in Iraq he said he would do during his campaign and no amount of low poll numbers or barbs from his critics have deterred him.

That, ladies and gentleman, is leadership. When all is said and done in Iraq nobody is going to remember these polls. What historians will remember is that President Bush told Americans that he was going to liberate Iraq and turn it into a democracy, and that after telling his constituency what he was going to do he went out and did it.

You can read more from Rob Port at SayAnythingBlog.com