Will Bush Lose on the Character Issue?

From the Whiskey Bar -- Polls are now showing a growing distrust of Bush.

Q: Do you think the Bush administration, before the war, did or did not portray Iraq as an imminent threat to the US?

Did: 87%
Did not: 11%
No answer: 2%

So it seems that in this case, at least, the conservative campaign to rewrite history isn't making much headway.

Q: Do you think that there are other governments existing today that have human rights records as bad as that of Iraq under Saddam Hussein?

Yes: 88%
No: 10%
No answer: 2%


Q: Do you think that President George Bush is honest and frank or do you sometimes have doubts about the things he says:

Honest and frank: 42%
Sometimes have doubts about things he says: 56%

As the PIPA survey notes, Bush's growing credibility gap has some powerful political implications:

Overall, perceptions of honesty are a powerful predictor of the likelihood to vote for the president. Those who said the president is honest and frank are 11 times more likely to say that they plan to vote for him than people who have doubts about things he says. Perceptions of the president’s honesty were the most powerful predictor of the likelihood to vote for the president of all factors analyzed in a binary logistic regression, including party identification.
And, indeed, for the first time since the end of major combat operations, the percentage of Americans who say Bush's conduct of the war has made them less likely to vote for him next year (42%) is now higher than the percentage who say it's made them more likely (35%).

Bush's eroding "honesty" ratings at least suggest the "good father" gestalt is gradually weakening -- hammered by the constant pounding of the Iraq fiasco and the administration's increasingly feeble attempts to insist that two plus two equals five. It also suggests a line of attack for the opposition: Not only is Bush a miserable failure, he's a miserable lying failure.