The next round: Polls key for a battered Bush

WASHINGTON -- There's a funny thing about political polls. Like corporate earnings reports, what matters most to the casual investor is the trend arrow, not the actual number. For George W. Bush, the arrow has been tracking down ever since his speech proposing $87 billion to rebuild Iraq (and a little for Afghanistan) about a month ago. But it's brought his approval ratings only to a point equivalent to where he was before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks -- roughly 50 percent, in most polls.

That may be a surprise to some people, but not, apparently, to the White House. Master strategist Karl Rove reportedly has been saying for years that the country is evenly divided and that the Republicans have to prepare for a 51-to-49 presidential election in 2004. But Rove did not say what happens to his theories if the arrow continues trending down -- if Bush keeps falling like a 2001 high-tech stock.

That's why all of Washington is watching the next two weeks so closely. By the next round of polls, the news that a member of the administration may have leaked the name of a CIA operative to retaliate against a critic of its Iraq policy will have seeped into the public consciousness. Bush is also likely to be wounded by shrapnel from the congressional debate over the $87 billion -- even some leading Republicans are balking at the price tag. And the economy is likely to march in place -- an uptick in poverty here, a downtick in unemployment there.

Given the expected bad news, the next round of polls will show definitively whether the president is merely experiencing a soft landing on a solid base of support -- or whether he's free falling without a parachute.

Most political professionals will be surprised if it's the latter. Bush's willingness to stick with his policies in times of wavering confidence, the way he faced down last week's weapons-inspection report, has given him a leadership aura that overrides the substance of his positions: Almost everybody, Democrat and Republican, believes he'll be very tough to beat.

But the truth is that the numbers can be read both ways. For much of the past year, Bush's Iraq policy was supported by roughly 60 percent of Americans, according to a series of Pew Research Center polls. There were minor fluctuations depending on the news of the moment. Then, after US troops began cutting through Iraq like a warm knife through butter, another 10 percent jumped on board, either wanting to support the soldiers or convinced that victory would be easier than they thought.

At his high point for the year, Bush's approval ratings edged into the low 70s. That's a commanding position for a president approaching reelection. But it's not at all a commanding position for a president in the first heady days of a war. During the 1991 Gulf War, Bush's father approached -- and in some polls exceeded -- 90 percent. In fact, it may be that the nation has never gone to war with less public support than it did in March.

Even at its height of popularity, the Iraq War still struck 30 percent of the electorate as a bad idea. That's the unwavering core of opposition that has grown angrier and angrier as this conflict they opposed has cost more lives and resources. In retrospect, it's hard to believe that so many Democratic presidential aspirants who supported the war, or at least accommodated it, were unprepared for the anger they encountered on the campaign trail. The party's activists never bought into Iraq.

There's another surprise in the numbers. For all the voters who overwhelmingly say that the economy is their most pressing concern, Bush's approval ratings have fluctuated based on the news from Iraq, not Wall Street. The conventional wisdom is that problems overseas can strengthen a president, but problems at home will always come home to roost. It may be that the opposite is true with this president: Voters believe that the economy is largely out of the White House's control, but this particular war -- the preemptive war against Hussein -- is wholly owned and operated by Bush.

With crucial decisions about the Iraq policy in play -- such as who controls the rebuilding and what kind of government is put in place -- the intersection of policy and polling will be busy this fall. Already, the drops in support have set off the expected Pavlovian response under the Capitol dome. Democratic senators who once registered their respectful opposition are now screaming fraud; Republicans who offered their eager support are now expressing sober concern.

The next round of polls will be telling not only for the fate of Bush, but for the fate of Iraq.

Peter Canellos can be reached at canellos@globe.com.