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American Morning
Bush's U.N. Speech Critical to Regain Support in U.S.
Aired September 23, 2003 - 09:36 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The president's pitch to the U.N. General Assembly is also designed to strike a chord obviously here at home. And CNN's senior analyst Jeff Greenfield joins us with that. Good morning, nice to see you.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: Good to see you.
O'BRIEN: Clearly, the president has more than one audience, international audience. Many people will be listening to little nuggets in his speech. And that makes it hard to deliver the speech to everybody, right?
GREENFIELD: Yes, and I think there's a particularly direct impact of that dual audience because in normal times, the American audience pays relatively little attention to a U.N. talk like this. But this time there's a domestic audience that's apparently growing impact with events in Iraq and they'll be watching to see whether President Bush can make the case for help on the ground, maybe with troops or police forces or money, from nations that in general did not support this war in the first place.
And you might ask, Well, why is that significant domestically? Because as John King just told us, there are clear signs the president is losing support on his Iraq policy. As you've heard the latest CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll show the country almost evenly split on whether Iraq was worth going to war over. A huge majority agrees the war is not over.
And moreover, this discontent has apparently helped drive the president's job approval ratings down to the lowest point of his presidency. He gets only a narrow nod from the public. You've seen these numbers a moment ago, 50 to 47. But that's a drop of nine points in just a month.
And now for the first time, two Democratic rivals, General Wesley Clark and Senator John Kerry, are narrowly ahead of Bush in these endless trial heats. While others, Howard Dean, Richard Gephardt, Joe Lieberman, trail by statistically insignificant margins.
So there's a lot on the president's plate, Soledad.
O'BRIEN: At the same time, you are the guy who will often say polls, schmolls. You know too early to tell, you can't really say, they don't necessarily delineate anything clearly. Why do you feel differently this time around?
GREENFIELD: Polls, schmolls is a great New York way to put it. But you're quite right. I mean We saw this again in the "Newsweek" poll that General Clark is already -- he's at 22 percent. He's the front runner five days after he announced for president, right? While the next four go between 10 percent and 13 percent. But 48 percent of Americans are unfamiliar with Clark.
I got a better reason for skepticism. Go back 20 years to October 1983 and here's what you find. President Ronald Reagan with low job approval ratings, 45 to 44 percent, worst than President Bush. And back then in a trial heat against former Vice President Walter Mondale, Reagan trailed by six points, right? Now you might remember when the election was actually held a year later, Reagan won by a 20- point landslide and carried 49 states.
Now having said that, I do think we're seeing a familiar and disturbing pattern for the president in the Iraq numbers. Americans like their wars quick and bloodless and decisive. And with 24 News and a generally faster pace of life, that impatience tempo is increasing.
So what the president says this morning in convincing or not convincing Americans about Iraq policy I think has a lot more significance than the normal widely ignored U.N. address.
O'BRIEN: So critical internationally and critical domestically as well.
GREENFIELD: Remember, the president spoke to the nation a couple of weeks ago. And the tradition of those speeches, the presidents almost always gets a bump in the polls. These numbers show the president's approval ratings sliding after he said, Hey, guess what. We need $87 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan.
O'BRIEN: We'll see what happens after this speech. Jeff Greenfield, thanks as always.
GREENFIELD: OK.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired September 23, 2003 - 09:36 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The president's pitch to the U.N. General Assembly is also designed to strike a chord obviously here at home. And CNN's senior analyst Jeff Greenfield joins us with that. Good morning, nice to see you.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: Good to see you.
O'BRIEN: Clearly, the president has more than one audience, international audience. Many people will be listening to little nuggets in his speech. And that makes it hard to deliver the speech to everybody, right?
GREENFIELD: Yes, and I think there's a particularly direct impact of that dual audience because in normal times, the American audience pays relatively little attention to a U.N. talk like this. But this time there's a domestic audience that's apparently growing impact with events in Iraq and they'll be watching to see whether President Bush can make the case for help on the ground, maybe with troops or police forces or money, from nations that in general did not support this war in the first place.
And you might ask, Well, why is that significant domestically? Because as John King just told us, there are clear signs the president is losing support on his Iraq policy. As you've heard the latest CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll show the country almost evenly split on whether Iraq was worth going to war over. A huge majority agrees the war is not over.
And moreover, this discontent has apparently helped drive the president's job approval ratings down to the lowest point of his presidency. He gets only a narrow nod from the public. You've seen these numbers a moment ago, 50 to 47. But that's a drop of nine points in just a month.
And now for the first time, two Democratic rivals, General Wesley Clark and Senator John Kerry, are narrowly ahead of Bush in these endless trial heats. While others, Howard Dean, Richard Gephardt, Joe Lieberman, trail by statistically insignificant margins.
So there's a lot on the president's plate, Soledad.
O'BRIEN: At the same time, you are the guy who will often say polls, schmolls. You know too early to tell, you can't really say, they don't necessarily delineate anything clearly. Why do you feel differently this time around?
GREENFIELD: Polls, schmolls is a great New York way to put it. But you're quite right. I mean We saw this again in the "Newsweek" poll that General Clark is already -- he's at 22 percent. He's the front runner five days after he announced for president, right? While the next four go between 10 percent and 13 percent. But 48 percent of Americans are unfamiliar with Clark.
I got a better reason for skepticism. Go back 20 years to October 1983 and here's what you find. President Ronald Reagan with low job approval ratings, 45 to 44 percent, worst than President Bush. And back then in a trial heat against former Vice President Walter Mondale, Reagan trailed by six points, right? Now you might remember when the election was actually held a year later, Reagan won by a 20- point landslide and carried 49 states.
Now having said that, I do think we're seeing a familiar and disturbing pattern for the president in the Iraq numbers. Americans like their wars quick and bloodless and decisive. And with 24 News and a generally faster pace of life, that impatience tempo is increasing.
So what the president says this morning in convincing or not convincing Americans about Iraq policy I think has a lot more significance than the normal widely ignored U.N. address.
O'BRIEN: So critical internationally and critical domestically as well.
GREENFIELD: Remember, the president spoke to the nation a couple of weeks ago. And the tradition of those speeches, the presidents almost always gets a bump in the polls. These numbers show the president's approval ratings sliding after he said, Hey, guess what. We need $87 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan.
O'BRIEN: We'll see what happens after this speech. Jeff Greenfield, thanks as always.
GREENFIELD: OK.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
