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to a topic on which agreement with him is relatively high. Terrorism has been his easily most agreed-with policy for about two years, so every focussing on that sees his numbers go up and every turning away from it sees them fall.
But the approval number in 'handling terrorism' has slowly fallen, and with it his ceiling. It's been a bit flakey, but the falloffs roughly corellate with Al Qaeda 'victories'. Bush hung in the high 50s on the topic before the Madrid bombings, hung in the mid/low 50s between those and the London bombings (slowly diminishing as Al Qaeda kept up its offensive in Iraq, though), and Pew says it has fallen to 49% since the London bombing. I think it hasn't bottomed out yet, either- my guess is a 45% rating in a week or two.
I really worry what will happen when Al Qaeda realizes that it truly has control of the Bush Presidency now. And Lordy, it must embarrassing to be Karl Rove now- he now either has to unhitch the Administration from the War on Terrorism (horrifyingly embarrassing), win it very rapidly (meaningfully impossible), or become utterly hostage to Al Qaeda and take the political sodomizing by bin Laden that is pretty inevitable.
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