PR Pushes Poll Numbers

Share this

President Bush's approval rating has risen to 44% in a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll conducted September 15-17, 2006. This represents his highest marks in a year. Concurrently, for the first time since December 2005, a majority of people did not say the war in Iraq was a mistake. This shift is particularly interesting in light of a Z Magazine web article that analyzes the Bush administration's recent PR push to ensure that safety from terror and staying the White House's course are one and the same. Hardly striking a moderate tone, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has accused the administration's critics of not learning “history’s lessons,” while the President himself in an August 31, 2006 speech to the American Legion National Convention labeled the terrorists “successors to Fascists, to Nazis, to Communists and other totalitarians of the 20th century.”