Passion and Reason on the Road toWar: Presidential Approval and Public Support for the Invasion ofIraq.

George W. Bush enjoyed an historic rally effect, in the aftermath of 9/11 that is widely regarded as the basis for public and elite support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This paper applies the affective intelligence model of political judgment to explore the impact of attitudes toward Bush upon support for the pending invasion, as of late February 2003. Three hypotheses are examined: first, that enthusiasm (E) for Bush was associated with receptivity to pro-war rhetoric and support for hawkish policies; second, that anxiety (A) about Bush was related with receptivity to anti-war rhetoric and support for dovish policy options; and third, that emotional responses to Bush on these dimensions interacted to yield four distinct orientations – Hawk (high E, low A), Dove (low E, high A), Ambivalent (high E, high A), and Apathetic (low E, low A) In the pretest phase of a quasi-experimental design, 157 undergraduate respondents were recruited from three locations. They completed questionnaires in late Feb. 2003, including items for evaluating: approval of presidential job performance, affective responses to Bush, four Iraq policy options (ranging from no use of force through unilateral invasion), and 16 items evaluating pro-war and anti-war rhetoric. Findings regarding attitudes towards George W. Bush include: the expected two dimensional structure of emotional responses to Bush, that emotional enthusiasm for Bush played a critical role in overall approval ratings of the president and was far more important than domain specific performance ratings, and that anxiousness played little role in presidential approval. With respect to the pending war, findings are that: (1) enthusiasm for Bush was strongly associated with hawkish attitudes, (2) that anxiousness about Bush, even among his supporters and those who approved of the invasion options, was associated with receptivity to anti-war rhetoric (e.g. concerns about the costs of war), and (3) that enthusiasm and anxiousness interacted in their effects on attitudes in a manner consistent with the hypotheses. These results hold with controls for the effects of ideology, partisan identification and gender. A principal finding is that feelings of anxiousness about Bush, regardless of partisan or ideological agreement, were significantly and substantially associated with consideration of arguments and policy options in opposition to unilateral invasion of Iraq. Unbridled enthusiasm, on the other hand, was associated with rejection of concerns about American casualties, Iraqi civilian deaths, domestic economic costs, or destabilization of the Middle East. These findings support the affective intelligence proposition that anxiety arousal stimulates attention to alternative choices and reflective political thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]