U.S. President George W. Bush had requested that God Bless America be sung during the seventh-inning stretch of every major-league baseball game "until further notice," as it had been sung immediately following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But this week, as the baseball season kicked off, a number of teams dropped the song after fans quietly declared "enough, already." At home games of the Chicago Cubs, the Oakland A's, the San Francisco Giants and the San Diego Padres, fans will participate in the Star Spangled Banner, the minute of silence at the ninth minute and eleventh second and will hear the message from the President at the stadiums packed with Stars and Stripes flags, but the seventh-inning singing of Irving Berlin's emblematic tribute to a "land that I love" will be gone.

As goes baseball, so goes war.

While U.S. citizens still are vociferously supportive of the war in Afghanistan and philosophically agree with the larger war on terrorism, fissures emerged this week in the solid wall of unquestioning support for the Bush administration's foreign policy since Sept. 11.

This was evident on the streets, where the administration lost credibility by making an awkward attempt to expand the war-on-terrorism rhetoric to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and where the struggle against al-Qaeda and the Taliban appeared stalled as the allied forces failed again to capture Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Bush is no longer viewed by all as a national hero, especially not by Democrats.

A poll conducted this week by Ipsos-Reid and the Cook Political Report indicates that only 56 per cent of Americans think their country is headed "in the right direction," down 12 percentage points from the impressive 68 per cent measured in January. Of the 2,000 people polled, 36 per cent think the country is headed "down the wrong track," up seven points from January, according to the poll.

Significantly, Mr. Bush has experienced a nine-point drop in public approval for "handling foreign-policy issues and the war on terrorism," although that approval dropped to a still impressive 77 per cent, the poll suggests.

Many U.S. observers say the changing mood can be traced partly to the Bush administration's failure to secure a Middle East ceasefire, as well as the President's attempts to link Palestinian suicide bombers and a potential attack on Iran to the war on terrorism.

"He wants to make those things a part of his war on terrorism, and it's really not necessary or even beneficial to do that," Michael O'Hanlon, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said yesterday. "People here have enough reasons to hate Saddam Hussein, like the possibility that he has nuclear weapons, that it only hurts the case to try to make these things fit into the war framework."

Another reason for the wavering support: Democrats, who until quite recently were reluctant to make public any criticisms of Mr. Bush's foreign policy, are making political hay by painting many of his foreign strategies, including the execution of the war, as Republican initiatives, rather than national missions.

The charge this week was led by John Kerry, Democratic senator from Massachusetts and a potential presidential candidate.

"Make no mistake about it; we are united as never before as a nation in our commitment to win the war abroad. But we cannot permit Republicans to pretend that the war is the only issue before our country. Patriotism is not defined by avoidance of issues at home. Patriotism is the courage to fight for those things that strengthen and defend our nation," Mr. Kerry said in a speech.

These phrases were echoed by many Democrats, including former presidential candidate Al Gore, who returned to the political arena last weekend. Mr. Gore, who for the most part has maintained a low profile since Sept 11, attended a party meeting in Florida and did nothing to end rumours that he will seek the presidency in 2004. He had even shaved off his beard.

Mr. Bush, meanwhile, appeared to be struggling to hold on to his war-hero status, as pollsters acknowledged that his greatest weakness is that he, like Mr. Gore, is a mere politician. "The more [the Democrats] politicize him, the more they reduce his aura," Frank Newport of the Gallup polling organization said.

Backing the war

According to polls taken by Ipsos-Reid/Cook Political Report, Americans in March and April were less inclined to think that the country is headed in the right direction with the war on terrorism than they were according to the January survey.

The first survey was taken Jan. 4-6 and 18-21.

The latest survey was taken on March 14-17 and April 12-14.

                                March/April survey      January survey

Country headed in the right direction................56%.............................68%

Country headed in the wrong direction..............36%.............................29%

© 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc

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