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Did Bush Get A "Zarqawi Bounce?" And What Does That Mean?
By Matt Margolis
Last week I came across a story that indicated that Bush's approval ratings experience a bump after the news of Zarqawi's death. For one day at least, President Bush was more popular than he's been all year.
The president's lagging poll numbers got a swift boost from Thursday's news that U.S. warplanes had killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted-terrorist in Iraq.
Polling done on Thursday for the IBD/TIPP Presidential Leadership Index gave Bush a 44.2 rating, up from 39.1 in the prior days of June and 38.9 in May. The last time the Index reached this level was in December, when it hit 44.3.
Bush received a similar bump after the capture of Saddam.
So what does this all mean? The obvious answer is that Bush's approval ratings are tied directly to the success--or more accurately, the perceived success--in Iraq. This ultimately means that the media plays a huge role in President Bush's approval ratings, because they are the ones who get to tell the story of what is happening in Iraq, and as we know, bad news is what makes the news, and therefore coverage of Iraq is mostly negative.
Despite the media's presentation of the war in Iraq, our successes there are undeniable, and 20-40 years in the future history will paint a different picture of George W. Bush's presidency than what many so-called "experts" today say about it. I believe that George W. Bush's presidency will be described in the history books as one of the most successful in our time. President Reagan's critics during the 1980's have already been proven wrong, and Bush's presidency, too, will find the history books kinder than the media's story of his presidency.