While millions of Americans, blue and red, argue over the importance of moral values in the just-completed presidential election, one thoughtful analyst believes we're missing the point.
The election outcome actually reflected a passionate desire by many to elect a forceful leader, says Steven Kull, a researcher at the Program on International Policy Attitudes, who wrote a recent study of Bush and Kerry supporters.
That desire - born out of the fears and uncertainties that followed the Sept. 11 attacks and accompanied the war in Iraq - blinded people to apparent facts, trumping virtually every other issue as it set the stage for Bush's victory, Kull says.
It is most evident, he contends, in the varying attitudes Bush and Kerry supporters have about the war in Iraq, not just about its justification or importance but about accepted truths.
"This perceptual gap has created a rift in society between those who see and those who don't that is really destructive," Kull said in an interview last week. "Until we agree about the facts, our ability to pull together and solve our problems will be impaired and the damage will continue."
According to Kull's polling, sponsored in part by the University of Maryland, both Bush and Kerry supporters agreed that the United States should not have gone to war in Iraq without evidence of weapons of mass destruction or significant aid to terrorists. What they disagree about is the existence of that evidence.
A substantial majority of Bush supporters, Kull found, believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq was providing significant support to al-Qaida terrorists, that clear evidence of this support was found, and that most people around the world were not opposed to the United States' going to war with Iraq.
They continued to believe this, he found, despite a series of widely publicized reports that reached opposite conclusions, including a study by chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer finding no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee that came to the same conclusion, a report by the 9/11 Commission concluding there was no evidence that Iraq was providing significant support to al-Qaida, and polls that indicated widespread international opposition to the invasion.
The polls also showed that a substantial majority of Kerry voters believed the conclusions of these studies and questioned the legitimacy of Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq.
