Zogby: No Bush speech bounce

And 42 percent of the public now says Bush should be impeached if he misled the country about the reasons for war.

Published June 30, 2005 8:38PM (EDT)

A new Zogby poll out today gives us the first sense of how the president's Iraq speech played with the public: It didn't.

A Zogby poll taken a week before the speech had 56 percent of the public saying they disapproved of the president's job performance. The new poll, taken after the speech, has 56 percent of the public saying they disapprove of the president's job performance. The percent of the public that approves of the job George W. Bush is doing dropped from 44 to 43 percent, a change John Zogby called statistically insignificant.

"It's all about the war,'' Zogby tells Bloomberg. "This war has really polarized Americans. This is what his presidency is all about. The only thing that could change is if things start to go better on the ground, and it's not good to be at the mercy of external events."

Another poll result that's "not good" for the president: The concept of impeachment is slowly sinking in for a substantial portion of the American people. It's not a majority, but 42 percent of the public, including 25 percent of the Republicans surveyed, now say that Bush should be impeached if -- and is this really an "if," now? -- he misled the country about the reasons for going to war.


By Tim Grieve

Tim Grieve is a senior writer and the author of Salon's War Room blog.

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