The capture of Saddam Hussein boosted President Bush's job approval rating and gave Americans new confidence in U.S. military efforts in Iraq, according to a poll released Tuesday.Bush's approval rating was 58 percent on Sunday, the day news of Saddam's capture broke, up from 52 percent the day before, the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found.
Seventy-six percent of those polled said the U.S. is likely to succeed in Iraq, up from 72 percent before the capture was disclosed. After the capture, 37 percent said toppling Hussein was not worth the human and financial costs, while 46 percent said so last month.
By a margin of 62 percent to 32 percent, the poll's respondents said the war in Iraq had made the U.S. more secure; in September, 52 percent agreed and 43 percent disagreed with that statement.
That last set of numbers is quite interesting because if peole think that Bush's policies have made the US safer, he will win big in '04. Those numbers are especially interesting after Howard Dean stated yesterday that he believe that the capture of Saddam did not make the US any safer.
Of course, any Iraq-specific effect will fade--the question will be: by how much?