Poll: Bush Has Highest Approval Rating Ever
Sunday September 23 3:29 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ninety percent of Americans approve of the way President Bush is handling his job after the Sept. 11 attacks, the highest rating for a U.S. president ever recorded by the Gallup polling group, USA Today and CNN reported on Sunday.
The 90 percent job approval rating, measured in a poll of 1,005 adults Friday and Saturday, outranks the previous record -- a rating of 89 percent garnered by Bush's father, former President George Bush, at the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
It compares to an approval rating of 86 percent scored by the younger Bush in a survey conducted last week, just after hijackers slammed three airliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon near Washington, leaving 6,800 dead or missing. A fourth hijacked airliner crashed in Pennsylvania.
Bush on Sunday ended the official mourning period, presiding over a ceremony to hoist the U.S. flag to full staff for the first time since the attacks, which Washington blames on Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network.
The United States has begun a military buildup to prepare for possible retaliation for the attacks and Bush on Saturday consulted with his aides from the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.
Gallup said the poll, which it conducted for CNN and USA Today, showed the highest presidential approval rating in the six decades it has been posing the question to Americans.
President Harry Truman scored an approval rating of 87 percent after the Germans surrendered in WWII. Gallup began measuring presidential approval in 1938 during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt.
Franklin D. Roosevelt scored an 84 percent approval rating in January 1942, one month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The latest poll showed that 82 percent of Americans favored direct U.S. military action in Afghanistan, while 13 percent disapproved and 5 percent had no opinion.
Ninety percent of those surveyed were convinced it would be a long war, and 95 percent said it would be difficult to win, said the pollsters.
The poll also showed confidence in the U.S. economy, despite a slump that was clearly exacerbated by the attacks.
Sixty percent of those polled were ``extremely'' or ``very'' confident the U.S. economy would be prosperous in the long term, while 31 percent were moderately convinced. Only 8 percent of those polled did not expect a long-term recovery.
The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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