Here’s his explanation of declining war-support in polls:
I think that many Bush supporters simply couldn’t take stock of the full measure of the screw-up in Iraq during the election because doing so would have conflicted their support for President Bush. Iraq and the war on terror so defined this election that support for the war and the president who led us into it simply couldn’t be pried apart.
Perhaps it wasn’t so internalized. During the slugfest of the campaign supporting Bush just meant supporting the war and this is what people told pollsters when they were asked, because one question was almost a proxy for the other.
You can even do a thought experiment by imagining how many conservatives during election season would have been so staunch in their support for the war if it were being fought under a President Gore or a President Clinton. The question all but answers itself.
Well, some of us who backed Bush in 2000 and also backed the war in 2001 and 2002 did try and pry the two issues apart. And the reason I narrowly backed Kerry is that I wanted us to win the war; and had a hard time maintaining minimal confidence in the current leadership. I wonder if that judgment has now sunk in more generally, as pre-election partisanship subsides. We’ll see, won’t we?
The Dish 