BUSH BY THE NUMBERS

The President's approval rating has risen to 61 percent, up 5 points from the days prior to his surprise trip to Iraq. It's fair to say that that trip, which was absolutely the right thing to do, helped boost his ratings as well.

But there's more to the story. President Bush's rising approval rating has reached into the Democrats' own kitty of voters, 55 percent of whom personally approve of President Bush. That's a nine-point rise, in about a week. These Democrats may disagree with his policies, but a majority of them think he's an okay guy. Keep in mind these Democrats see and hear the same things we do--about Enron and Halliburton, about the "WMD lies," etc, and they're more inclined to buy into anti-Bush rhetoric than non-Democrats. Yet they view him positively.

To me, this suggests that the Democrats who are currently driving the primaries and influencing their presidential candidates to keep moving left are out of the mainstream, even of their own party. They're too far to the left for their party's own good. The Howard Dean candidacy is fueled by a demagogue's anger and hatred of Bush that apparently is not a majority view within the party. When Dean wins the nomination next year, and it's his to lose at this point and he seems invulnerable to the kind of gaffes that typically destroy a candidate, he may find himself in command of a rump party. The majority of Democrats, the centrist and center-left components of the party, will probably not follow him over the electoral cliff. They will vote for Bush a la the "Reagan Democrats," or they will not vote. Dean is running like McGovern while taking advice from Jimmy Carter, and seems about as charming as a rattlesnake to those of us who see in his anger a slightly disturbing tendency to exaggerate Bush's faults and play to the hard left at the expense of rational discourse. He may lose next year in Mondale '84 proportions--or worse--if even at this stage a majority of his own party view President Bush favorably on a personal level. I doubt Dean himself could get a 55 percent personal approval rating from the Democrats.

But there is probably more fueling Bush's own surge than the turkey day trip to Iraq. The economy, after adjustments, grew at 8.2% last quarter. Jobless claims are down, new jobs are up. And now manufacturing has kicked in royally, the most robust growth in 20 years. The jump in manufacturing, which is a lagging indicator, tells the economic types that we're in for yet another positive quarter, but this past quarter was so strong that next quarter may look weak by comparison. So much for the "Bush economy" being the President's Achilles heel next year. It's looking more and more like a club that he can use to bludgeon Dean.

As for Iraq, no US President has ever lost an election by being too hard on the nation's enemies. In persuading the nation that Saddam Hussein must be removed from power, President Bush used nearly identical arguments to those the Clinton administration used, to futility, for the same purpose in 1998. The country was for the most part hawkish on Iraq then, and was even more hawkish after 9-11. The principal differences, the ones that ultimately brought about Congressional support for military action, seem to have come down to the events of 9-11 and the personal leadership employed by Bush and his national security team. In 1998, virtually no one took the Clinton team seriously when it tried to use a town hall meeting broadcast exclusively on one cable network from a university to argue in favor of war. They just didn't seem serious; the whole thing played as farce. But the Bush team, in speech after speech and before the world and the UN, made essentially the same arguments the Clinton team had, and carried the day. They got Congressional support, and a majority of the American public lined up behind them. They got a new UNSC resolution promising serious consequences for further Iraqi misbehavior. They built a real coalition, mustered its armies, and actually removed Saddam from power. No US President has ever lost his job for liberating millions of people, even if they happen to live halfway around the world. President Bush won't be the first. As the Iraqi security situation turns a positive corner, as is likely, next fall President Bush will be seen rightly as the man who led us through two successful wars, and who has kept terrorists from mounting a major strike on US soil in three years.

He will be very tough to beat for a credible candidate. Dean will probably find defeating Bush impossible.