Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) -- In May 2003, President George W. Bush stood before a ``Mission Accomplished'' banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major combat in Iraq.

That month, 68 percent of Americans said the U.S. had made the right decision in invading Iraq, according to a survey by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes.

As U.S. casualties mounted, to 971 killed and 6,690 wounded as of Aug. 27, and attacks and kidnappings continued, Americans changed their mind. In another survey by the University of Maryland published Aug. 20, support for the invasion dropped to 46 percent. Sixty-nine percent said the war had damaged the U.S. image abroad.

``It's been a stunning turn of events,'' said Bruce Buchanan, a University of Texas professor and author of four books on the presidency, including ``The Policy Partnership: Presidential Elections and American Democracy,'' published in April. ``Bush gambled on the war in Iraq, and so far, it is not a winning hand.''

As Bush accepts the Republican nomination tonight and is deadlocked with Democratic challenger John Kerry, the president and party leaders are talking less about Iraq and more about the broader ``war on terror,'' said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who is author of ``War, Presidents and Public Opinion'' and other publications on how war affects presidencies.

`Utter Chaos'

``The polls over the past several months show that terrorism is on the increase in terms of issues voters are concerned about,'' Mueller said. ``Bush's basic idea is to say to voters, `If you're really concerned about this, you don't change leaders in the middle of solving a problem like this.''

There's good reason for that strategy, Mueller said, because Bush and his aides predicted a short, successful war followed soon by economic progress and democracy in Iraq.

``That hasn't happened, and instead, what you have is this situation of utter chaos on the ground, of Americans getting killed every day,'' Mueller said. ``Not one of their predictions turned out to be correct, except for the easy military victory.''

Party leaders including Arizona Senator John McCain, Vice President Dick Cheney, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani lauded Bush's response to terrorism at the Republican National Convention in New York this week.

`Greatest Challenge'

``President Bush will make certain that we are combating terrorism at the source, beyond our shores'' Giuliani told delegates Monday. ``John Kerry's record of inconsistent positions on combating terrorism gives us no confidence he'll pursue such a determined course.''

Giuliani mentioned ``terror'' or ``terrorism'' 40 times in his speech. He used ``Iraq'' and ``Saddam Hussein,'' the former Iraqi dictator, 10 times.

``In all that we do, we will never lose sight of the greatest challenge of our time: preserving the freedom and security of this nation against determined enemies,'' Vice President Cheney told the convention last night. He cited the war with Iraq, along with attacks on al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, as proof that terrorists were wrong to think ``they could attack us with impunity.''

Kerry, 60, said yesterday that Bush's handling of the war in Iraq had made terrorism a greater threat, not a lesser one. The four-term Massachusetts senator said Bush failed to build a broad alliance for the invasion and the occupation of Iraq diverted resources needed to pursue al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan.

Strategy Working?

``As a result, today terrorists have secured havens in Iraq that were not there before,'' Kerry told a convention of the American Legion, the largest U.S. veterans group, in Nashville, Tennessee. ``Iran has expanded its influence and extremism has gained momentum.''

Bush, 58, told the same group on Tuesday that ``we are winning the war'' on terrorism ``and we will win. We will win by staying on the offensive.''

The Bush campaign's focus on terrorism may be working, polls suggest. In a Washington Post/ABC poll published Tuesday, 58 percent said Bush was better at handling terrorism, compared with 36 percent who said Kerry was. On Aug. 1, Bush and Kerry were in a statistical tie at 48 percent for Bush and 45 percent for Kerry on the same issue.

Terrorism and Iraq were each named the most important issue by 19 percent of registered voters in the Aug. 26-29 poll. The economy and jobs ranked most important, cited by 31 percent. For the first time since the Vietnam War era, national security issues concern U.S. voters more than the economy and jobs, according to an Aug. 18 report by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

Wrong Track

In an Annenberg Election Survey released yesterday by the University of Pennsylvania, 53 percent of those questioned said they approved of Bush's handling of the war on terror, compared with 50 percent before the Democratic convention in July.

Bush and Kerry are tied in the presidential race in most national polls, including the Washington Post/ABC survey, which showed each favored by 49 percent of those surveyed. A Time magazine poll published Monday gave Bush a 46 percent to 44 percent advantage over Kerry, within the survey's 3 percent margin of error.

Still, 54 percent of those questioned in the Post/ABC poll said the country is on the wrong track. In a CBS television poll published Aug. 20, 55 percent said the same.

Of the last five incumbent presidents to lose re-election bids, each had wrong-track ratings below 50 percent within 100 days of election day. ``Those are very dangerous numbers for an incumbent,'' said Buchanan of the University of Texas.

After Sept. 11

``We're all sort of sitting here on the razor's edge; nobody's comfortable,'' said Vin Weber, a former Republican House member from Minnesota and the Midwest chairman of the Bush campaign.

The tightness in the polls is a turnaround from the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when Bush stood in front of the smoking rubble of the World Trade Center, his presidency transformed overnight by the attacks, and issued a call to arms.

``The people who knocked down these buildings are going to hear all of us,'' Bush said through a bullhorn, his arm draped around retired New York City firefighter Bob Beckwith.

``It gave us an uplifting,'' Beckwith, a Republican from the New York suburb of Baldwin, said in an interview. ``Some of the fellows I once worked with, they lost their sons'' on Sept. 11. ``We lost a bunch, eight.'' Beckwith said he voted for Bush in 2000 and will do so again, largely because of the way he has conducted the war on terror.

Electoral Votes

Bush was endorsed by New York City's main firefighters union during the convention last night. The union's parent, the International Association of Firefighters, endorsed Kerry last September.

Bush has cited post-Sept. 11 moments in stump speeches, ``I clearly remember the hard hats screaming at me, `Whatever it takes,''' he said Aug. 18 in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. ``I wake up every day thinking about how best to protect America. I will never relent in chasing down the enemy and securing America, whatever it takes.''

Bush's job approval rating topped 80 percent after the attacks. It has fluctuated between 46 percent and 50 percent the past two months in the Washington Post/ABC News polls.

Presidential elections aren't decided by the national vote tally but by the Electoral College, in which the candidate who wins a state gets that state's Electoral College votes. A candidate must get 270 electoral votes to win. Analysts say the war is likely to be a factor in so-called battleground states such as New Hampshire.

Kerry on Iraq

``New Hampshire is one of the swing states that is trending toward Kerry, and it's not just because he's from just across the border in Massachusetts -- it's because of the issue of the war,'' said Dante Scala, director of the Institute for Politics at St. Anselm's College in Manchester, New Hampshire. Bush won New Hampshire's four electoral votes in 2000 by a margin of 1.3 percentage points.

Falling support for the war doesn't translate into an automatic advantage for Kerry, who voted for the congressional resolution authorizing the president's use of force. Bush has also criticized Kerry for voting against an $87 billion measure to fund the troops in Iraq. Kerry says he cast that vote to protest the way Bush went to war, knowing that the spending measure would safely pass.

Kerry also said on Aug. 9, as Bush has reminded voters since, that he would have voted for the resolution authorizing war with Iraq even if he had known in advance that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, the main reason Bush gave for invading. No such weapons have been found.

`Peace President'

Bush at times has appeared to be trying to distance himself from the war in Iraq. Last month in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Bush told a campaign rally, ``Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president. The next four years will be peaceful.'' The words ``peace'' or ``peaceful'' appeared in the speech 20 times.

That was a change from a Feb. 8 interview with NBC's ``Meet the Press,'' when Bush said, ``I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind.''

The ``war president'' label is helpful, said Weber, the former Republican congressman from Minnesota.

``At the end of the day national security is a significant advantage for the president,'' Weber said. ``People understand we're in a war. And `war president' has defined him as a decisive and powerful leader.''

Kerry advisers say their candidate's chances have improved because there is little Bush can do to control the war in Iraq or the economy, another issue that ranks high as a voter concern.

``In both of those cases, he has a record, and it is clear that things haven't worked,'' said Joe Lockhart, a strategist for the Kerry campaign who served as former President Bill Clinton's press secretary. ``And he's already done everything he can to affect either situation.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Dick Keil in New York at dkeil@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 2, 2004 01:10 EDT