Bush is increasing his lead over Kerry. This may seem surprising to our intellectual class. After all, new attacks on him continue on a daily basis, from Kerry who questions his integrity and character and thinks that W is his intellectual inferior, to the 9/11 Commission’s now clearly politicized mode of inquiry, to Woodward’s new book, etc. How is it that Bush is rising in the polls? The main reason for this is the war. People understand that he is a war president, and they are going to think about him in those terms. Despite the attacks, pople trust him. Bush has erased, by the way, the twelve point lead Kerry had on the economy. These numbers must be frustrating for Democrats because, above all, what they reveal is that Kerry is not persuading people to take him or his opinions seriously. I look for major changes in the Kerry campaign; they cannot continue to base their campaign hoping for bad news either at home or abroad.

Here is the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, and this is the Washington Post/ABC News poll.