Forty-six percent agreed with that charge; 47% disagreed. A majority of independents sided with Kerry, including Luechtefeld, the University of Missouri professor. "I think the best option is to get rid of President Bush, have him voted out of office, so that some of the attitudes will change abroad," he said.
Leah Hubertz, a hairstylist from Delavan, Wis., embodied the ambivalence on the question.
"I think the rest of the world would like us a little bit more if we changed leaders," she said. "But if you replaced [Bush] right now with John Kerry, I don't know how good a job he would be doing in the same position."
Most voters were eager for more international help in Iraq: 56% said the U.S. should give NATO the principal role in securing the country. Kerry has proposed such an idea, but NATO, which will discuss the question at its summit this month, has been reluctant to accept even a minor role.
Twenty-four percent of those polled said the U.S. should establish a deadline for withdrawing all its troops from Iraq, as experts such as James B. Steinberg, the former deputy national security advisor under President Clinton, had proposed. Seventy-three percent rejected the idea.
The poll found voters inclined to defer to the new Iraqi government on whether to increase or reduce the size of the U.S. deployment.
Asked what the U.S. should do as the new government took power, 41% wanted to reduce the American presence, with 18% of voters saying all troops should be withdrawn and 23% calling for partial withdrawal.
But 41% also said the U.S. should add or subtract troops only at the request of the interim government. (Another 9% wanted to increase troop deployment regardless of the interim government's view.)
The cooperative impulse only extended so far: 51% said the Iraqi government should not be given a veto over military operations by the U.S. and its allies.
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Attitudes on Iraq
All in all, do you think the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over, or not?
Registered voters Worth it 43% Not worth it 53% Don't know 4%
Dem. Ind. Rep. Worth it 16% 42% 83% Not worth it 81 54 11 Don't know 3 4 6
Source: Times Poll
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Voters' attitudes about the war in Iraq
Q. Do you think the Bush administration's policies in Iraq have given countries around the world a more positive or more negative opinion of the U.S., or have Bush's policies had no effect?
