Now that the Kerry campaign has clearly focused on Iraq as the central issue in the 2004 presidential race, public attitudes on the subject become critically important. Kerry faces a difficult challenge because he must win support from voters who hold sharply divergent views.

There are four basic questions whose answers, taken together, provide a reasonably clear outline of the public’s general view of Iraq as a political issue.

1. Was decision to invade right or wrong?
2. Has it helped or hurt the war on terrorism
3. Should the US stay until a stable government is established or bring the troops home within a short time.
4. How well is Bush handling the situation?

While there are other important questions, these four provide a solid basic framework or outline of the key public attitudes. They have the additional value of having been asked a sufficient number of times in recent weeks to provide survey data that reflects a variety of question wordings and polling methodologies.

The central and most dramatic fact about current public opinion on Iraq is that, even after the Republican convention, public support for the Bush administration’s approach on all four of the key questions above has still not returned to the levels of last January.

According to a Sept 17th Pew Research Center survey, last January:

65% of the general public thought that launching the war in Iraq was the “right decision”. Only 30% disagreed.

55% believed that the war in Iraq “helped the war on terrorism”. Only 32% thought it had hurt it.

63% felt America should “keep military troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized” while 32% wanted the U.S to “bring the troops home as soon as possible”.

59% approved of the way Bush was handling the situation in Iraq, in contrast to only 37% who disapproved.

In short, support for Bush and his policies hovered in the 55-65% range while contrary views did not rise above the low and mid 30’s. In the following 4-5 months, however, all of these positive numbers for the Bush administration declined dramatically under the impact of the startling military reverses in Faluja and other major cities along with the appearance of major reports critical of the Bush Administration and the revelations regarding the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

As a result, by June the Pew data showed that the percentage believing the war was the right decision had fallen by 10% (from 65% to 55%), the percent who felt the Iraq operation helped the war on terrorism had fallen by 12% (from 55% to 43%) and the percentage wishing to keep troops in Iraq fell 12% as well (from 63% to 51%).

(Conversely, those who felt the invasion had been the wrong decision increased by 8%, those who felt it hurt the war on terrorism rose by 12% and those who wanted to bring the troops home more rapidly also increased by 12% )

Finally, the percentage approving Bush’s handling of Iraq fell a remarkable 17% (from 59% to 42%) while those who disapproved rose 14% (from 37% to 51%).

This dramatic decline in the support for Bush and his policies in Iraq played a substantial role in creating the overall lead in the polls Kerry assumed during the spring of 2004. But this lead was clearly tenuous because it was substantially rooted in a perception that the Bush administration had lost control of events and literally did not know what it was doing. It was therefore reasonable to expect that, if the administration could prevent further military reverses for several months and avoid further scandals or damaging revelations, these depressed levels of support would gradually reverse themselves and begin rising back toward their previous levels.

In fact, however, the recovery Bush enjoyed was extremely limited. By August, the percentage saying that the U.S. made the “right decision” actually fell another two points to 53% and remained at that level even after the Republican convention. The percentage saying that the incursion had helped the war on terrorism only rose 3% from June to September (from 43% to 46%) and the percentage wishing to keep the troops in Iraq until stability was achieved also rose only by 3% from June to September (from 51% to 54%).

Those approving Bush’s handling of the situation rose from 42% to 47%. Those disapproving declined from 51% to 45%.

In short, while the downward slide in support for the war and Bush’s handling of it that began in April slowed and slightly reversed during the summer, the reversal was actually rather modest and, even after the Republican convention, support was still substantially below the level it had been the winter before. Support for the view that the war was the “Right decision” was 12% below the level of January, support for the view that it had helped the war on terrorism was down 9%, support for keeping the troops in Iraq was down 9% and Bush’s approval rating was 12% below its January level.

It is important to keep this larger pattern in mind when looking more closely at the specific questions. There are important differences in the way Americans feel about the four distinct issues, but in all these cases, the key fact is that Bush and his policies in Iraq have still not returned to their former level of popularity.

In examining the first of the four questions in more detail, the most striking thing that emerges from a comparison of the major polls taken during August and September are the clear differences that appear depending on the wording of the question. Polls which ask whether the U.S. “did the right thing”, “made the right decision”, or “made a mistake” tend to show a clear majority affirming that the U.S. was indeed “right”

When the wording shifts to whether it was “worth going to war”, however, polls tend to show the respondents being much closer to evenly divided. And when the question asked is if the war was “worth the number of U.S. casualties and financial cost” or “worth the cost in lives and dollars”, respondents reply that it was not by margins of 6-9%.

Democracy Corps, whose polls often go beyond traditional polling methods to incorporate techniques derived from market research and the social sciences, in mid- September asked respondents to choose between a full-paragraph statement about Iraq that noted the 200 billion dollar cost, the 1,000 dead and the loss of control over a substantial portion of the country and two “anti-Kerry” statements challenging either Kerry’s supposed “waffling” on Iraq or his willingness to leave Saddam Hussein in power – the two main counterarguments offered by the Bush administration. In both cases from 7% to 13% more of the respondents said that they agreed with the first, “the war is not worth it” statement rather then either of the two anti-Kerry propositions.

This clearly suggests the critical importance of the language that is used during the coming weeks. Many Americans still want to consider the war as “right” even as they conclude that it is increasingly not worth the cost in lives lost and resources wasted.

Turning to the second question – whether the invasion of Iraq has helped or hurt the war on terrorism, the data again shows the degree to which opinion can be shaped by the language that is used. The most striking example can be found in two questions asked in an August 10-15 Harris poll.

When asked if the invasion of Iraq has “strengthened or weakened the war on terrorism” 50% chose the first option while only 40% chose the second. But when the same survey also asked if the invasion “helped to protect the United States from another terrorist attack, 54% said it had not, in contrast to only 43% who thought that it had. From this, it appears that more general, “macho” phraseology (“strengthened” rather then “weakened”) evokes a more pro-administration response, while more practical questions about actually reducing risk produce a less belligerent set of responses.

This is reinforced by an August 20 survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) which revealed even more clearly that, when asked relatively specific and practical questions about terrorism, the American people do not think the war has actually made them more secure. One question, for example, asked if a better use of US resources would have been a) to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein or b) to “use those same resources instead for pursuing al-Qaeda and stabilizing Afghanistan”. In this comparison, 52% chose the latter option while only 39% chose the former. In the same survey 49% said “US involvement in Iraq is creating more terrorists who are planning to attack the US” while only 25% thought the war in Iraq was eliminating such terrorists.

The third issue – how long to keep troops in Iraq – shows a rather different pattern from the first two questions. Regardless of question wording almost all surveys during August and September showed majorities of between 54 and 58% clearly in favor of keeping troops in the country until some form of stability is achieved. Moreover, unlike the other questions, this majority sentiment never fell below 50% during the spring of 2004 in most surveys or ever declined to near-parity with any “bring the troops home” alternative.

This suggests that the resistance to withdrawing U.S. troops until some form of stability is achieved is a more stable and deeply rooted opinion then some of the others. It likely reflects a common American attitude that, having committed the soldiers to combat, they should remain until “the job is done”. A similar kind of sentiment was evident during the Vietnam War in the 1960’s and also during France’s colonial occupation of Algeria and led in both cases to a “casualty paradox”. Increasing numbers of dead and wounded, rather then stimulating a desire and demand for withdrawal, led to a growing intransigence and insistence on the application of additional military force to “finish the job”.

There are a variety of conclusions that can be drawn from this data, but the most important is that Kerry cannot win the election if he only garners the support of those who think the Iraq war was “wrong”, who believe it has made us more vulnerable to terrorism and who feel that the troops should be brought back home even in the absence of a stable government.

On the contrary, to build a winning coalition Kerry also has to reach out to a substantial number of the people who, the data show, think the war is, in some meaningful sense, “right”, who believe (or at any rate would like to believe) that our attack on Iraq represented in some undefined way a retaliatory strike against a global enemy called terrorism and who believe that we should stay in Iraq until we “finish the job”

This demands an extremely difficult balancing act. Mobilizing the first group demands an aggressive style of campaigning, one that embodies and expresses many Democrats deep frustration and passionate disagreement with Bush’s actions in Iraq. At the same time, attracting a significant segment of the second group requires Kerry to present himself as more mature, thoughtful and experienced leader who will do a better job of putting together a long-range, international plan for restoring Iraq to stability.

It will be extremely difficult to simultaneously satisfy both these audiences but the degree to which Kerry succeeds in doing so will substantially determine the outcome, not only of the coming debates, but of the 2004 election.