November 17, 2003
STUPID LIKE A FOX
Protests begin but majority backs Bush visit as support for war surges (Alan Travis and David Gow, The Guardian, 11/18/03)
A majority of Labour voters welcome President George Bush's state visit to Britain which starts today, according to November's Guardian/ICM opinion poll.One of the things that Karl Rove and the President know is that most Americans want to support and defend their country. Violent and irrational protests, giant puppets and vandalism against McDonald's and Starbucks were never going to sway the American people. It was always perfectly predictable that they would have the opposite effect, driving Americans to support the President and the war in order to avoid feeling any fellowship with ANSWER and its ilk. It is good to see that the English are still like us in this respect. The left -- genuinely angry at seeing its utopias crushed and its inevitable future glory once again delayed -- just doesn't understand that its anger only drives people to the right. The Democrats who do understand this are the ones who most fear a Dean candidacy. Posted by David Cohen at November 17, 2003 10:23 PMThe survey shows that public opinion in Britain is overwhelmingly pro-American with 62% of voters believing that the US is "generally speaking a force for good, not evil, in the world". It explodes the conventional political wisdom at Westminster that Mr Bush's visit will prove damaging to Tony Blair. Only 15% of British voters agree with the idea that America is the "evil empire" in the world. . . .
The ICM poll also uncovers a surge in pro-war sentiment in the past two months as suicide bombers have stepped up their attacks on western targets and troops in Iraq. Opposition to the war has slumped by 12 points since September to only 41% of all voters. At the same time those who believe the war was justified has jumped 9 points to 47% of voters.
This swing in the mood of British voters is echoed in the poll's finding that two-thirds of voters believe British and American troops should not pull out of Iraq now but instead stay until the situation is "more stable".
History repeats itself from the intra-election period of 1968-72. The loud protests against the war at that time, combined with the media's general support of their goals, helped blind much of the press and then the Democratic Party to the backlash in the general population going into the 1972 election.
The protesters and those who believed as they did thought they were part of the "wave of the future," and burushed off contrary indications -- such as the support the World Trade Center construction workers got when they walked over to Wall Street and beat the heck out of some anti-war protetors in 1970 -- as the brutish behavior of a unsophistcated and in all liklihood racist minority (the predacessor to the Clinton era's "angry white male"). That's what led to Paulene Kael's infamous 1972 comment that she couldn't believe Nixon had won because nobody she knew had voted for him.
Nowadays, the media is more diverse, as Fox News, talk radio and weblogs have forced the rest of the media to broaden what they cover or be called on it. That means the networks, the New York Times and/or the Washington Post can't just show a protest on the D.C. Mall anymore and plausbily claim this represents the feelings of the majority of Americans. But England is a more generalized locale and so the major media will again take their own personal beliefs, then completely ignore this poll and assume that the anti-Bush protests in London represent the majority opinion over there, and present that view to the U.S. public.
Posted by: John at November 18, 2003 12:00 AM