WaPo Pew poll, June 2011
EJ Dionne wrote an excellent pair of columns Monday (
here and
here) book-ending a
new Hill poll and a
WaPo-Pew poll on the Obama plan for withdrawal of surge troops. The essential question EJ asks is whether Obama's policy is prudent and reasonable and if so, why no support from politicians? EJ:
The problem for Obama is that what he sees as a grand revival of bipartisanship in foreign policy is being dismissed widely as an improvised set of split-the-difference tactical choices.
His withdrawal schedule from Afghanistan is too slow for the doves, too quick for the hawks. In the case of Libya, he’s too aggressive for those weary of American military intervention and not bold enough for those who think the United States has a moral obligation to bring down the Gaddafi dictatorship. The fact that almost all our troops will be out of Iraq by the end of the year goes unheralded.
Getting the troops out of Iraq is a Biden BFD. Getting the remaining troops out of Afghanistan won't be so easy.
From the Hill poll, here's where things stand with the public:
Thirty-nine percent of likely voters feel that the pace of withdrawal outlined by Obama is “about right,” the poll found.
But sizeable minorities disagree. Thirty percent believe the scheduled withdrawal is not fast enough, while 28 percent believe American troops are being pulled out too hastily.
To add to this, WaPo Pew says:
A new Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll finds a 44 percent plurality of Americans say Obama is handling the drawdown from the Afghanistan war “about right.” Roughly three in 10 (29 percent) say he is not withdrawing quickly enough and 14 percent say he is moving too quickly. The survey was conducted after Obama’s primetime address last Wednesday detailing his plan to bring home 10,000 troops by the end of the year and 23,000 more by next summer. More than seven in 10 adults in a Post-ABC poll earlier this month supported removing a substantial number of troops this summer, but fewer - 43 percent - said they thought it would actually happen.
This is an interesting partisan breakdown of the WaPo-Pew poll from Behind the Numbers:
That Obama is doing this "too quickly" loses, even with Republicans. That he's not doing it "quickly enough" actually has more support from Republicans (32) and independents (33) than Democrats (21), reflecting partisan support for Obama (66% of Democrats figure what he's doing is just right, much higher than anyone else.)
Still, while remembering that the election is more about the economy than Afghanistan, it is a reminder that support for Afghanistan policy may be fragile, particularly if there's no end game in sight. And the policy itself gets no credit for Obama. The Hill:
Relatively few voters feel that the plan Obama has just announced will do his chances of re-election any harm. But there is a much sharper divide over whether it will benefit him, or will be largely irrelevant to the election’s outcome.
The Hill poll found that 40 percent of likely voters believe the plan will help his chances of winning a second term while 43 percent contend it will make no difference.
If by next year, the withdrawal slows down or doesn't happen, I'd expect a sharp swing in opinion away from current policy. Obama still has some room to maneuver, but not very much and not for much longer.
In a best circumstance Afghanistan won't hurt Obama much, but it's hard to think of any circumstance where it actually helps him.