The preceding four chapters have outlined the leadership, domestic political and organizational factors that privileged some options over others and combined to reinforce the utility of key decisions on the path to war. But there are several societal and international (Chapter 7) pressures that should also be considered when evaluating the relative strengths of Gore-war and Gore-peace counterfactuals. Of course, these ‘structural’ variables, like the organizational impediments described in the previous chapter, are less amenable to significant alterations over time and, by extension, are much more likely to encourage continuity across administrations. The broader the level of analysis, the more structured the variables, and the more likely they are to induce consistent priorities and patterned behavior from one leader to the next.

For example, polling on public approval of Bush’s Iraq strategy from 2002 to 2003 was consistently above 60 percent, the highest polling numbers since the peak after 9/11 (see Figure 6.1).