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Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11-Iraq Connection in the Bush Administration's Rhetoric

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2005

Amy Gershkoff  and
Shana Kushner
Amy Gershkoff
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, Princeton University ([email protected])
Shana Kushner
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, Princeton University ([email protected])
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Abstract

We suggest that the 2003 war in Iraq received high levels of public support because the Bush administration successfully framed the conflict as an extension of the war on terror, which was a response to the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Our analysis of Bush's speeches reveals that the administration consistently connected Iraq with 9/11. New York Times coverage of the president's speeches featured almost no debate over the framing of the Iraq conflict as part of the war on terror. This assertion had tremendous influence on public attitudes, as indicated by polling data from several sources.Amy Gershkoff ([email protected]) and Shana Kushner ([email protected]) are graduate students in the Department of Politics, Princeton University. The authors thank Larry Bartels, Gary Jacobson, Douglas Foyle, seminar participants at Princeton University, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. Authors' names listed in alphabetical order.

Type
Research Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , September 2005 , pp. 525 - 537
Copyright
© 2005 American Political Science Association

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