Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-44mx8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-10T11:38:06.565Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Almond, Gabriel. 1950. The American people and foreign policy. New York: Praeger.
Althaus, Scott L. 2002. American news consumption during times of national crisis. PS: Political Science and Politics 35 (3): 517–22.Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry. 1996. Politicians and the press: Who leads, who follows? Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, CA.
Baum, Matthew. 2002. The constituent foundations of the rally-round-the-flag phenomenon. International Studies Quarterly 46 (2): 263–98.Google Scholar
Bennett, W. Lance. 1990. Toward a theory of press-state relations in the United States. Journal of Communication 40 (1): 103–25.Google Scholar
Bennett, W. Lance, and David Paletz, eds. 1994. Taken by storm: The media, public opinion, and US foreign policy in the Gulf War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Brody, Richard. 2003. The American people and George W. Bush: Two years of rally volatility and grinding erosion. In The George W. Bush presidency: An early assessment, ed. Fred I. Greenstein, 228–44. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Campbell, Angus, Phillip Converse, Warren Miller, and Donald Stokes. 1960. The American voter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cohen, Bernard. 1963. The press and foreign policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Delli Carpini, Michael X., and Scott Keeter. 1996. What Americans know about politics and why it matters. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An economic theory of democracy. New York: Harper and Row.
Erikson, Robert, Michael MacKuen, and James Stimson. 2002. The macro polity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books.
Iyengar, Shanto. 1991. Is anyone responsible? How television frames political issues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Iyengar, Shanto, and Donald Kinder. 1987. News that matters: Television and American opinion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jacobson, Gary. 2003. The Bush presidency and the American electorate. In The George W. Bush presidency: An early assessment, ed. Fred I. Greenstein, 197–227. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Jamieson, Kathleen Hall, and Paul Waldman. 2003. The press effect: Politicians, journalists, and the stories that shape the political world. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kinder, Donald. 1998. Communication and opinion. Annual Review of Political Science, vol. 1. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp.
Klarevas, Louis. 2002. The “essential domino” of military operations: American public opinion and the use of force. International Studies Perspectives 3 (4): 417–37.Google Scholar
Kull, Steven, Clay Ramsay, and Evan Lewis. 2003. Misperceptions, the media, and the Iraq War. Political Science Quarterly 118 (4): 569–98.Google Scholar
Kull, Steven, Clay Ramsay, Stephan Stubias, and Evan Lewis. April 22, 2004. US public beliefs on Iraq and the presidential election. Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and Knowledge Networks. http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Iraq/IraqReport4_22_04.pdf.
Lawrence, Regina, and W. Lance Bennett. 2000. Civic engagement in the era of big stories. Political Communication 17 (4): 377–82.Google Scholar
Mueller, John. 1970. Presidential popularity from Truman to Johnson. American Political Science Review 87 (1): 87–101.Google Scholar
Mueller, John. 1973. War, presidents and public opinion. New York: Wiley.
Nelson, Thomas, and Zoe Oxley. 1999. Issue framing effects on belief importance and opinion. Journal of Politics 61 (4): 1040–67.Google Scholar
Page, Benjamin. 1996. Who deliberates? Mass media in modern democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Page, Benjamin, and Robert Shapiro. 1992. The rational public: Fifty years of trends in Americans' policy preferences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Paris, Roland. 2002. Kosovo and the metaphor war. Political Science Quarterly 117 (3): 423–50.Google Scholar
Polsby, Nelson. 1964. Congress and the presidency. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Sobel, Richard. 1998. Trends: United States intervention in Bosnia. Public Opinion Quarterly 62 (2): 250–78.Google Scholar
White House. 2001. Address to a joint session of Congress and the American people. September 20. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html.
White House. 2002a. President increases funding for bioterrorism. February 5. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/02/20020205-4.html.
White House. 2002b. President's address to the United Nations. September 12. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html.
White House. 2002c. A decade of deception and defiance. September 12. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912.html.
White House. 2003a. State of the union. January 28. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html.
White House. 2003b. War on terror: Iraq; denial and deception Weekly radio address. March 8. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030308-1.html.
White House. 2004. President discusses homeland security with WI first responders. March 30. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/03/20040330-6.html.
Woodward, Bob. 2002. Bush at war. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Zaller, John R. 1992. The nature and origins of mass opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.