How did you vote during the war, daddy? Public disenchantment with the war probably won't matter in November

Reason, August-Sept, 2006 by Brian Doherty

THE WAR IN Iraq is increasingly unpopular: A May ABC News/Washington Post poll found 62 percent of Americans saying it wasn't worth fighting. Nor is the American public thrilled about the prospect of a fresh war with Iran, however much it might break the monotony on Fox. Polled support for military action against Iran was about 13 percent in an April Opinion Research/CNN poll, and a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll the same month found 54 percent of Americans don't trust President Bush to make the right decision when it comes to managing the mullahs.

This dissatisfaction over foreign policy, past, present, and future, is driving a general dissatisfaction with Bush and his party, with 69 percent of Americans saying the country is off track and 56 percent saying they'd prefer the Democrats to be running Congress. Since voters' next chance to steer the ship of state is this November, surely it's conventional wisdom that the party that stands for the war will be tossed out on its ear.

But it's not. Many professional poll watchers and experts on public opinion and war are confident that the public's foreign policy anxieties are apt to have a surprisingly small effect on the results in this year's congressional and Senate races. A general dissatisfaction with Bush and the Republicans, of which dissatisfaction with the war is a part, might lead to major Republican losses. But it might not. Whether those awful GOP poll numbers will result in even the loss of the 15 net seats the Democrats will need to take over the House is still hotly debated among pollwatching professionals.

A nonprofessional might imagine that 69 percent dissatisfaction should lead to a rout for the party controlling both houses and the presidency. But it isn't always so: In 1984, for example, Democrats were beating Republicans by 15 points in a September survey of general support, but ended up losing 16 House seats in November.

Nor do political entrepreneurs seem to be leaping on the war issue in massive numbers. There are some angry Democratic primary challengers making incumbent support of the war, or lack of sufficient energy in fighting it, their big issue--most prominent among them the Daily Kos-approved Ned Lamont, who is aiming to take down former vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), the Republican's Democrat, in the contest for his Senate seat. But the Democrats' power centers, including even anti-war stalwart Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, are supporting incumbents against more staunchly anti-war challengers.

"If we are going to seize this moment," says Boxer, "we must focus on the vast number of differences we have with our Republican opponents, not the few we have with each other." Progressive Democrats of America, a group dedicated to moving the party in a leftward, more anti-war direction, has found fewer than 15 Democratic primary challengers worthy of its endorsement.

The Iraq war's failure to have an electoral impact would not be unique. John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University and an expert on war and public opinion, points to the 1970 midterm elections. Coming on the heels of an extremely unpopular Cambodia invasion, and with Vietnam in general acting as a stinking albatross around the GOP's neck, the election cost the Republicans only 12 seats in the House--fewer than the Democrats need this time around to win control.

Why does such huge public dissatisfaction with the war, and with Congress, seem likely to have such small effect on this year's elections?

Some possible explanations:

* We hate Congress, but love our congressman. Voters' dissatisfaction with Congress in general doesn't mean dissatisfaction with their own representatives. In the last four elections House incumbent reelection rates have exceeded 95 percent. Generic satisfaction with Congress has, to put it mildly, never been anywhere near that high.

* The war issue doesn't split neatly along party lines. Remember, 29 Democrats in the Senate and 81 in the House voted for the original Iraq war resolution.

* Voter rationality. We know full well, however upset we may be about the war, that our one representative or senator has little power to do anything about it. Thus, it is not likely to be a decisive factor in how we choose to vote.

* Congressmen are afraid to flip-flop. You might expect to see many incumbents, even Republicans, running away from an unpopular war. They aren't. Some analysts suggest that candidates who supported the war are afraid to seem like insincere flip-floppers by turning against it.

I will treasure the moment when an angry congressman turns on the flip-flopping public: Dammit, you used to like the war too! As Bertolt Brecht put it, the legislature might wish it could "dissolve the people and elect another." But the public isn't necessarily inconsistent: Even before the fighting started, a January 2003 Pew poll found that support for war in Iraq fell from 76 percent to 29 percent if it were posited that Saddam Hussein had no hidden WMDs.