Stay up to date with our Politics newsletter, sent weekly.
The war in Iran continues with no clear end in sight. President Trump has declared, “We won,” but has also indicated the U.S. could be in the fight for a while.
How long exactly this conflict will last is anybody’s guess, but there has been no “rally-’round-the-flag” effect for the president with this war, and the longer it goes on, the worse it could be for the president politically.
Not only are most Americans skeptical of prolonged U.S. military intervention overseas after two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan, but so is Trump’s base.
When looking at voters’ top concerns, foreign policy often ranks near the bottom. But military action that goes badly has — in addition to the human cost — often imperiled presidents and had irreversibly negative effects on them politically.
That was the case for presidents from Harry Truman to Lyndon B. Johnson to George W. Bush and others.
Harry Truman
People often cite the famous sign on Harry Truman’s desk in the White House as a model of responsibility.
“The buck stops here,” it read.
So did the political capital.
Truman, according to Gallup’s survey research archive, was the worst polling president of the last century.
His approval rating sat at just 22% in February 1952. The country was facing economic headwinds while also mired in the Korean war. The U.S. fought with South Korea against the North Korean invasion for three years, and more than 36,000 servicemembers died.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Few presidents’ swagger matched that of the tall Texan.
But the Vietnam war chopped that down.
Biographer Robert Caro described the Vietnam war as a “trap” that led to not just LBJ’s political decline, but also his health.
When he assumed office after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, LBJ had a 78% approval rating, per Gallup. That dropped to 35% in August 1968. Despite domestic policy successes, the war and his political standing led to him opting not to run for reelection.
He died four years after leaving the presidency, at just 64 years old.
Jimmy Carter
Carter’s presidency was marred by domestic and foreign-policy challenges.
None was a greater problem on the international stage than the Iran hostage crisis.
Iranian students took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage for 444 days. The incident in November 1979 initially caused a rally-’round-the-flag moment for Carter, who had been suffering from low approvals because of high inflation, fuel shortages and a jobs crisis domestically.
But a failed attempt to rescue the hostages — after a U.S. helicopter crashed in a sandstorm in the Iranian desert and killed eight servicemembers in April 1980 — led to a precipitous drop in Carter’s approval rating. It went from 43% just before the rescue attempt to 31% in June. It reinforced a narrative of weak leadership and imperiled his reelection bid.
The hostages were eventually released — on the day Republican Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.
George W. Bush
Aude Guerrucci/Pool/Getty Images
The son of the 41st president wanted to break the mold as a “compassionate conservative.”
The former governor of Texas had focused on domestic policy issues, such as education, and employed a less-than-hard line position on immigration.
But the Sept. 11 attacks changed everything, including Bush’s presidency.
He initially saw the country get behind him. He had the ultimate rally effect, going up to 90% in approval rating. Americans largely supported initial action in Afghanistan, and Republicans wound up bucking the historical trend and gained eight U.S. House seats in Bush’s first midterm — something that hadn’t happened since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first midterm in 1934.
But the wheels came off with the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Bush may have won reelection in 2004 with a “stay the course” message, but just two years later, with Iraq in the midst of civil war, his approval rating fell to 31%.
Bush’s problems were compounded in his last year when the continuing occupation of Iraq and a financial crisis led to a 25% rating — and the election of Democrat Barack Obama.
Joe Biden
Nothing hurt Biden’s presidency more than the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan months into his first year in office.
Determined to finally withdraw the country from the two-decade-long war after Obama and Trump didn’t do it, it ended in fatal fashion.
Thirteen U.S. servicemembers were killed in the chaotic exit in August of 2021, and it undermined a key part of Biden’s rationale to be president — that he would bring competent leadership back to the White House after Trump’s botched handling of the COVID pandemic a year earlier.
Biden’s approval rating sat at a healthy 56% in June 2021, according to Gallup, and 49% in the NPR/PBS News/Marist poll in July.
It fell to 43% in both surveys in September after the withdrawal and never recovered.
