Bush's falling poll numbers

WASHINGTON --SINCE WE ALL know — from President Bush himself, no less — that he is such a selfless leader that he never even peeks at opinion polls, let’s take a naughty glimpse at the latest anyway.

This stuff is from Zogby International, and it’s current. On the fighting in Iraq, Americans who think Bush is doing a good or excellent job are just 36 percent of the sample. Those who say fair or poor are now above 60 percent — 63 to be precise.

Those numbers don’t come close to explaining why Bush has suddenly become vocal again on security issues — the Rose Garden (twice) and the Reagan Building (once) having been the sites of speeches just in the last week.

The real reason is to be found in the numbers on what used to be considered the president’s strongest suit — the so-called war on terror. These are the numbers he used to bludgeon John Kerry last year as someone who could not be trusted to ‘‘keep us safe,’’ in order to scare the devil out of just enough voters to win reelection. From the immediate aftermath of 9/11 right through this spring — and even while the rest of his numbers were beginning to crumble under the weight of ineptitude and worse — the terrorism numbers held strong.

No more. They had been eroding for weeks, and the abysmal performance of government during the Gulf Coast hurricanes — exposing a stunning absence of ability to cope with catastrophe — probably accelerated the decline. At any rate, the latest Zogby numbers on Bush and the war on terror — in line with all the other data that pollutes the political landscape — are 49 percent good or excellent and 50 percent fair or poor.

The problem the president has faced in the Rose Garden and at the Reagan Building here yesterday is that there is very little he can do about this mess except talk. He has all the money he wants (even though it is money the government doesn’t technically have). He has all the power he wants. There is nothing more to get except those elusive results. Blaming somebody else for his woes isn’t much of an option anymore.

The real problem is not so much the opinion polls as the fact that the clock is ticking in Iraq toward that awful moment when it becomes clear that the country no longer trusts Bush on the subject or no longer supports an open-ended military involvement or both.

The president’s handlers have gone to great lengths to show him with his top military people in recent days, but the photos have not obscured the disturbing fact that he and they are not on the same page.

Bush is talking, as ever, about progress. They are talking — especially on Capitol Hill — about the limits of military capability in a murderous mess like Iraq. He is talking about resolve; they are talking about politics — Iraqi politics.

The latest major dent in the administration’s fading credibility is the yucky political situation in Iraq. In total contravention of its assurances, the constitution-writing process has been a mechanism to increase tensions , not to resolve them. The point is not merely that the Iraqis and their American helper-occupiers missed a deadline two months ago for a finished product. The point is that a constitution was written that makes the society’s divisions worse and could end up further enabling its Sunni and jihadist insurgency.

The idea that this is a budding democracy for which Americans should gladly sacrifice lives and treasure is absurd. The best way to understand this is to read the proposed constitution. Instead of creating a country, it fosters fiefdoms behind the fig leaf of ‘‘federalism.’’ There is nothing in it that will prevent Kurds in the northern part of the country from creating the equivalent of a breakaway state, complete with domination of the less-Kurdish city of Kirkuk and its oil fields. There is also nothing in it that will prevent the Iran-influenced Shi’ite majority in southern Iraq from achieving its dream of a mini-country of nine provinces, ruled by the iron fist of Islamic law and free to repress women and minorities.

Presumably, the constitution will be rammed down the throats of feminists, human rights true-believers, the Sunni majorities in central and western Iraq, and those few still believing in a democratic, secular state. It is fascinating, however, that it took a threat from the United Nations (to label the Oct. 15 vote illegitimate) to get the Iraqi authorities to reverse a lame attempt to fix the result by changing election rules.

These developments — along with the continued loss of lives and limbs — form the backdrop to Bush’s latest rhetoric. His loss of credibility and support is, moreover, beginning to be exacerbated by developments here.

After a summer of delays, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist at last had to schedule a vote on a proposal (from John McCain among others) to impose a few simple rules for the treatment of prisoners in the war (in Iraq as well as on terror generally). It was opposed by Bush but it passed with 90 votes.

There are going to be more developments like that as long as the public’s disenchantment with this mess continues to grow. Thomas Oliphant’s e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com.