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Kerry closing gap with Bush in opinion poll

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, MAY 15. In what should come as disturbing news to the White House a latest CNN-Time poll has found that the soon-to-be Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry, is closing the gap with the U.S. President, George W Bush, on handling the war on terrorism.

The polls has found that 49 per cent felt that Mr. Bush was stronger on that issue as opposed to 42 per cent feeling the same way for Mr. Kerry.

Equally disturbing to the White House is that those surveyed were about evenly split on how the President has been handling the issue of terrorism. Almost 46 per cent said Mr. Bush was doing a good job fighting terrorism and 47 per cent said that he was doing a poor job.

The White House simply cannot ignore the latest poll findings for the simple reason that for several months Mr. Bush got consistently above the sixty per cent mark for his handling of terrorism even if support in other areas of foreign policy was dropping. Projecting the President on the war on terrorism is one of the mainstays of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

In recent days the Republican administration has been forced to go on the defensive in the wake of horrific images of Iraqi prisoner abuses by American soldiers and interrogators at Abu Ghraib.

On Iraq the latest poll is showing the administration continues to take a beating with only 37 per cent of the people saying that the war is worth the costs and 56 per cent saying that it was not the case.

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