Only another outrage like 9/11 can save Bush’s re-election campaign

LAST year people were taking it for granted that George W Bush would be re-elected this November, but the lessons of history would suggest that it may not be so easy. Indeed public opinion polls indicate that he has an uphill battle.

During the 20th century there were 18 presidents of the United States. Eleven of them were Republicans, but only two of them served two complete terms Dwight Eisenhower (1953 to 1961) and Ronald Reagan (1981 to 1989). Two of the presidents Warren Harding and John F Kennedy were killed during their first terms, and the other 16 ran for re-election. Eleven were successful and five were defeated. Four of the losers were Republicans WH Taft (1912), Herbert Hoover (1932), Gerald Ford (1976) and George H Bush (1992). The only Democrat who was defeated in a re-election contest was Jimmy Carter (1980).

George W Bush and his father are only the second father and son combination elected president. In 1800 John Adams has the dubious distinction of being the first president to fail to win re-election, and his son John Quincy Adams was the second in 1828.

George H Bush was the most recent, but his son could assume that mantle in November.

In the latest public opinion poll Bush's favourable rating dropped to 41%, which is the lowest of his presidency, while his disapproval rating has gone up to 52%. His handling of affairs in Iraq has only 34% approval, which is down from 72% this time last year, while 61% disapprove of his Iraqi policy.

Only 30% of Americans think the United States is going in the right direction, while 65% think the country is on the wrong track.

Whether it is on foreign or domestic policy, Bush seems to be in trouble. In fact, people are marginally more critical of his domestic policy than his handling of foreign affairs. For instance, 37% approve of his foreign policy, while only 36% approve of his domestic policy. At the same time, 56% disapprove of his foreign policy and 57% are critical of his domestic policy.

Those figures would not seem to augur well for the president and the history of his predecessors running for re-election during wartime would not seem to favour his re-election tactics so far.

In 1916 and 1940, during the first and second world wars, the United States was not yet in either conflict when Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D Roosevelt ran for re-election promising to keep the United States out of war, while their opponents protested that they were even more determined to stay out of those conflicts. Roosevelt was re-elected to a fourth term while the United States was at war in 1944 but by then Japan and Germany had declared war on America. Harry Truman decided not to run for re-election in 1952 during the Korean War. His popularity at the time was at rock bottom and he would have had little chance of winning. He and the Democrats were being blamed for losing China to the communists.

Dwight Eisenhower refused to bail out the French in Vietnam at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, but he connived to prevent the implementation of the agreement concluded in Geneva to hold free elections in Vietnam in 1956, because he believed Ho Chi Minh would win at least 80% of the vote.

Eisenhower was afraid he would be accused of losing Vietnam to the communists when he ran for re-election that November. The Americans undermined the Geneva agreement by setting up a puppet regime in Saigon under Ngo Dinh Diem, but by 1963 Diem was secretly negotiating with Ho Chi Minh.

Seymour Hersh contends in his book, The Dark Secret of Camelot, that John F Kennedy had Diem deposed in November 1963 because, like Eisenhower in 1956, he did not want to be accused of losing Vietnam to the communists when he expected to run for re-election. Just three weeks after Diem's killing, however, Kennedy was himself assassinated. It was Lyndon Johnson who ran for re-election in 1964 and he essentially ran as an anti-war candidate.

"We are not about to send American boys nine or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys should be doing for themselves," he promised. His opponent Barry Goldwater was the warmonger, promising to bomb North Vietnam into a mud puddle, but he was slaughtered at the polls. At the time there were fewer than 20,000 American military "advisers" in Vietnam, but Johnson secretly planned to sent over half a million men there following his re-election.

By 1968 the electorate realised that Johnson had lied in 1964 and he was plagued by his "credibility gap". It was said at the time: "George Washington couldn't tell a lie, Franklin Roosevelt couldn't tell the truth, and Lyndon Johnson couldn't tell the difference."

He had planned to run for re-election again in 1968 but he withdrew after he fared poorly in the New Hampshire primary.

RICHARD NIXON was elected later that year, promising that he had a plan to end the war. We now know, however, that he deliberately frustrated Johnson's efforts to end the conflict in 1968 by secretly encouraging the Saigon regime to adopt an intransigent attitude at the Paris peace talks. By the time Nixon stood for re-election in 1972, he was claiming the war was over as Henry Kissinger had reached a peace agreement with representatives of Hanoi in Paris.

Before this agreement was concluded, however, Nixon was apparently plagued by fears that his despicable tactics in secretly frustrating Johnson's peace efforts in 1968 would be exposed, and this was one of the reasons his campaign people sought to bug the Democratic campaign headquarters in the Watergate building. This eventually led to Nixon's resignation two years later.

Except for Roosevelt in 1944, no American president campaigned for re-election as a war candidate in the 20th century. George W Bush may claim that the war in Iraq has been won, but if the body bags keep coming home, he made have problems convincing the electorate, especially when over 60% are critical of his handling of events in Iraq.

Some of his strongest international allies are already in trouble. José María Aznar has been ousted in Spain and Tony Blair is in trouble in Britain, where there is resentment at the way he has been deferring to Bush. Some 68% of British people have "not much" or "no confidence at all" in America's handling of the situation in Iraq.

Blair's problems are not caused by the Conservatives but by critics in his own Labour party, where 62% have little confidence in the Bush administration.

John Howard, the prime minister of Australia, is also in trouble. In the latest poll, 63% of Australians believe the Iraqi war was not justified, and Howard's coalition government is well behind the opposition Labour Party in the latest public opinion poll.

All of this could augur badly for Bush, who is coming under pressure to fire defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his team at the Pentagon.

Yet it would be foolish to write Bush off before November. Unlike what happened to Aznar in Spain, an outrage in the United States would have the opposite effect and perversely ensure Bush's re-election.